THE SHAPE THAT COMES OUT OF THE MOULD
Focused each year on a different topic, the fourth edition of SACO was dedicated
to building networks between alternative platforms of visual arts education in
Latin America, and to interact with more than 80 young people from the Great
Northern region of Chile who are interested in experiencing an intensive learning
and creative residency. The encounter and exchange of production and teaching
experiences among peers from Ecuador, Cuba, Mexico, Paraguay, Chile, Peru and
Uruguay, was at the same time designed as a chance for third and fourth year
Secondary Education students from municipal schools from the first four regions
in the northern part of the country to become initiated in contemporary art.
With the title Between the Shape and the Mould, SACO4 laid out a metaphor
regarding the relationship between those who teach and those who learn. In
the process of generating new utilitarian elements and educational systems,
with emphasis on the person, the best results are obtained the smaller the void
there is between one and the other, and when the way they fit is chosen by
each individual, according to the time and pressure needed. During the week of
the workshop, the energy released in this process of connecting and attaching
spilled out of the domes, expanding throughout the city. What happened was an
explosion of freedom; a conviction of the real sense of each hour of work, which
disappeared some time ago in the classroom, and was taken maximum advantage
of here. It could be felt in the results. The joy of creating and expressing yourself
returned to its natural place in the adolescent spirit. The need to question, to
propose, to discuss and to be an active part of a process, oppressed by the
educational system, found its space. Sensitive subjects, aware of the reality in
which they live, who are critical and creative, demonstrated that they deserve
much more than being an object summarized by the calculation of a score.
Between the Shape and the Mould was a creative camp, where eyes were
opened to things that were not even suspected to exist, very diverse and very
personal, to be heard, to be able to freely express yourself, to realize that there
are others like you, for whom art can matter, and that there are people who
do not discriminate, among many other discoveries. Looking forward, through
the prism of those who participated, enabled us to create other expectations
regarding what is to come.
THE COMPLETE GUIDE
Experiencing something other than what was expected and being surprised by
the density and diversity of the sound environment was the experience of the
concert Who I am by the artist Mario Z with the Really Contemporary Museum
(Alejandro Gonzรกlez and Daniel Cerda), accompanied by five local guests. A
session of experimenting in a packed auditorium, in the Ruins of Huanchaca
11

Museum, where the cracking and breaking of the musical paradigms of traditional
education was heard, where many people perceived the possibilities of sound
art for the first time. SACO4 started up with this activity in early August 2015.
Discovering, linking and professionalizing are the three key concepts of the
Escondida / MAVI (Visual Arts Museum) internship in Santiago for a young
artist from the region of Antofagasta. The program, materialised between Taller
Bloc and the Visual Arts Museum as part of the Contemporary Art Week, also
forms part of a broad range of educational actions carried out by the Group
SE VENDE Mobile Contemporary Art Platform, entitled School without school.
The two versions of the contest launched up until now (2015 and 2016) have
been won by young journalists from Antofagasta who now have some years of
production as artists. They are not isolated cases. Why is the emerging local
scene being nourished by so many devotees from the world of the media and
communications? Probably, the need for encounters with others through a
premeditated clipping of reality is the crossover point.
Returning to what is not suspected but what nevertheless exists and waits to be
discovered, which surprises and sets off new experiences, we move to the Lugar
Más Seco del Mundo (The Driest Place on Earth). Quillagua is a laboratory oasis,
where many of the relevant contemporary tensions are present in an impressive
and extreme context. The SE VENDE Group has been working here since 2011,
receiving artists and researchers mainly from outside the country to join the
residency program. The interest in the call that was made in 2015 in conjunction
with the Council of Culture and the Art far surpassed our expectations and also
confirmed the artists’ interest in understanding the territory, and in seeking real
and not prefabricated spaces.
Quillagua is on the edge of reality and fiction, a Chilean Macondo. The mummies,
the mummified Chinaman, the stories of Mrs. Felisa, the meteorites that left
their enormous print, but never were… The border between utopia and truth
becomes blurry and unnecessary. Everything can be something and can also be
something else. There are no certainties, other than the starry night sky and the
rocky terrain that extends to the horizon. For that, it is a perfect space for art.
I have my Quillagua, and every artist who goes there has his or hers.
Dagmara Wyskiel
SACO Director

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13

14

SACO4 AND ARTISTIC EDUCATION: ADOLESCENTS’ WORDS
The Antofagasta Contemporary Art Week, SACO, is organized annually by the
Group SE VENDE, Mobile Contemporary Art Platform, and each time takes
on topics that seek to energize local situations. An inevitable mark is always
the particularity of the territorial context, marked by centralism and extreme
geopolitical conditions: more than a thousand kilometres north of Santiago, the
country’s capital, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and with the entire Atacama
Desert, the driest in the world at its back, Antofagasta is the epicentre of mining
in Chile, leading the nation with the highest per capita income. However,
there are no spaces in the area that allow for disseminating contemporary art.
Moreover, in the entire northern part of Chile, there are no contemporary art
museums or university schools of art. It involves an aridness or a void where the
landscape is a literal symbol.
In its previous versions, SACO was, respectively, an exposition with international
artists that addressed the crossover between art, politics and the environment
(2012, Antofagasta Station Cultural Centre); an encounter of projects for
autonomous management of cities in Chile and Argentina (2013, Huanchaca
Cultural Park); and a series of interventions in the landscape that included
curators, artists and researchers from Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, reflecting on the
limits and the problematic relations among the three bordering countries (2014,
Huanchaca Cultural Park). Bringing current works and practices closer to the local
public; workshops and mediation activities for children and young people, as
well as dialogue and the potential connections among the guests that are always
formed by a group that shares activities inside and outside the framework, have
always been vital.
The fourth version of SACO, held from the 23rd to the 28th of August 2015, again
in the Cultural Park, pointed at a situation that is probably at the root of the
cultural deficiencies of the region (and the rest of the country): the lack of
artistic education.
SACO4 included more than 80 third and fourth year secondary students from
municipal schools in the Great Northern region of Chile, who participated in
intensive workshops guided by important artists on the Latin American scene,
who in turn are representatives of spaces or institutions in their countries that
propose educational projects alternative to the official or predominant systems:
Roberto Huarcaya from the Centro de la Imagen in Lima, Peru; Alejandro Turell
from the Tecnicatura en Artes - Artes Plásticas y Visuales del Instituto Escuela
Nacional de Bellas Artes (Associate’s Degree in Art – Plastic and Visual Arts of
the National Fine Arts School Institute), Universidad de la República, Rocha,
Uruguay; Saidel Brito from the ITAE, Instituto Superior Tecnológico de Artes in
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Ecuador, Guayaquil; Fernanda Mejía from the Taller Multinacional in Mexico
City; Marcos Benítez from the Museo del Barro, Asuncion, Paraguay; Luis Gómez
from ISA, Universidad de Las Artes, La Habana, Cuba; and Tomás Rivas from Taller
Bloc, Santiago, Chile.
The students were selected through the region of Antofagasta, including invitations
to students from the regions of Arica and Parinacota, Tarapacá and Atacama. They
were young people, age 16 and 17, approximately, coming from the most displaced
section in Chilean education, a system managed by the free market, determined
by profit and marked by large inequalities. They had the opportunity to create and
learn, along with artists-teachers who with experimental methodologies addressed
areas such as art video, photography, sculpture, drawing, interventions and works
with the place, among other topics and techniques. For five days the workshops
were opportunities for creation, for collective work, and also for reflecting on new
ways of assuming art in the territory or in the social context.
The Huanchaca Cultural Park was an important and meaningful framework. It
involves the ruins of a former silver refinery that functioned in the late XIX and
early XX century, in Bolivian, Chilean and British hands, and that is now a National
Historical Monument. There is a museum and auditorium in operation there,
and an entire cultural trip through a broad esplanade and the remains of the old
constructions that look as if they were Inca ruins.
Seven domes were installed on this site, for a workshop to be held in each one.
The landscape was cosmic, poetic. During the activities, the young people entered
and exited the tents, toured the site, and sometimes concentrated inside for
hours at a time. But the encounter between the students and the international
artists went far beyond the sphere of creation. Undoubtedly, the encounter also
left an impression on the teachers. Several of them had never given classes to
adolescents, facing very diverse groups including immigrants and young people
with special capabilities. The guests achieved expanding the objectives that were
sought, carrying out formal experimentations and questioning in situ, where the
students responded with works and comments that many times were unusual and
very lucid regarding problems or exercises that were proposed and where the city
was the important focus.
In parallel, SACO4 was an encounter among the teaching centres represented.
In the general forum, held on the 25th of August in the Cultural Park auditorium,
each guest presented his or her respective project. All the spaces convoked
are centres for teaching, creation, reflexion and research, driven by artists or
institutions that teach art with their own model and outside the epicentres,
even when they are situated within a university. In the dialogue, the seven
guests recognized each other from a work of resistance, in a common context
of precariousness, of social and cultural deficiencies, and of strong globalizing
influences.
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The evening of Friday, the 28th of August, the exposition Between the Shape
and the Mould was inaugurated under the Ruins of Huanchaca, a metaphor on
the relationship formed between the teacher and student, opening the domes
with the results of the educational, creative and experimental processes. In 17
days, about two thousand five hundred people toured the installations, where
each station was a space that gave account of the intensity experienced. The
assistants from each workshop, young tutors who also joined in the experience
that for all of them and in many senses was one of growth, participated as guides
for visitors from schools and institutions, as well as for the entire public.
When the staging was culminating, hours before the inauguration of the
showing, the young people said their goodbyes. In one of the domes, covered
with drawings, pasted photos, texts and objects, the teacher wanted them to
tell what they thought about the workshop. One girl spoke up and said that she
felt a rare combination of joy for what she experienced, for the new friends she
made, and for what was achieved, but sadness for having to return to the school
routine on Monday. Some of them looked at each other. Several remained silent.
It is not always easy to get an adolescent to talk.
Carolina Lara
Journalist and Art Critic

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THE PROMISE OF THE MOULD, THE CERTAINTY OF THE INTENTION
For the third consecutive time, the Huanchaca Cultural Park was able to witness
the magnificent relationship between creators, territory and work. This time,
SACO4 became a melting pot for more than 80 young people from different cities
in northern Chile, with the hallmark of establishing creative relationships with
artists/teachers, learning about art and its expressive possibilities, and above all
realizing that to create only requires blotting the supposed limits, understanding
that the space is not delimited by others but rather is as vast as each one wants
it to be. It is precisely in that space, â&#x20AC;&#x153;between the shape and the mouldâ&#x20AC;?, where
this intellectual, visual, sensitive, productive, intense and subjective dialogue takes
place.
As a Museum, we know the importance of establishing creative possibilities that
transcend traditional education, and we enjoy seeing how this residency evolves
into new views and opportunities for development in young peope who are avid
to feel capable of understanding their context, their world view, based on reflexion
and an understanding of the territory that constantly moulds them.
Teachers and apprentices, mutually moulding each other, in a creative lattice;
some providing the experience, others providing the energy, and the surroundings
providing the raw material for experimental learning of different artistic expressions
that formed a corpus of work that was shared with the community through guided
tours of each of the seven domes placed on the esplanade of the Huanchaca
Cultural Park, linked together to form the final exposition of the creative processes
carried out.
The artistic and patrimonial elements are functional in that their original design
was planned for maximum creative efficacy. The singularity and uniqueness of this
initiative and its sociocultural importance encourage us as an institution to provide
our resources and spaces so that the final work transcends its overall objective and
also promotes the particular, natural and social environments of each of the young
people who participated.
This perspective builds enriching experiences in the conversation implied, the
actual planning and the sensitive work, enabling offering the public a proposal
that invites them, seduces them, and finally encourages them to co-create from
their critical judgement. This way, the values inherent in identity and heritage, and
the individual conditions that enable transforming contexts, people and what we
understand as reality take on new meaning.
In the midst of globalization, we understand that these projects that value
multicultural creative heritage based on an integral, territorial and collaborative
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vision can become reference points for all those who want to reclaim artistic and
creative diversity as an essential cultural asset for the development of countries.
These criteria are manifested in an image of “creative territory” where there is
clearly an underlying nature of cultural sustainability. Based on diverse orientations
of the artistic sense, social processes and reconstruction of imagery, it is possible
to go into depth in contexts of value, image and identity of people and their
relationship with their territories.
This involves a dimension of awareness in which different variables interact.
For example, regarding territory, distinguishing between what is one’s own and
what belongs to others, between the visitor and the resident, and considerations
regarding a sense of belonging. In this communication process, education plays
a preponderant role for art in the conformation of values of identity, culture and
territorial roots: which make something “own” as opposed to “other”. The areas
that apply in a process of artistic education are of a material, symbolic, political and
functional nature, and are presented in a set that integrates the social elaboration
of the present, the tendency to change, and the valuing of the cultural references
that supplement the formation of conscious, reflective and sensitive individuals.
The natural and cultural taxonomy, assumed in its most holistic concept, is
represented as a condition that has modelled the formation of local cultures and
has enabled establishing the bases for consolidating human creative identity. In
these assertions and in the actions linked to SACO4, we find manifestations of
the complex structure of the transformative processes from a perspective that is
evidently cultural and sustained over time.
It is in this current field where the seeds for future development are planted, so
that the concept of “artist” has a true pretext and the valuing of artists’ patrimonial
potential is a concrete fact.
Carlos Riveros Grospelier
Curator, Ruins of Huanchaca Museum

19

20

FOCUS OF DISCUSSION
For Minera Escondida, it is a matter of great importance and pride to present the
4th Contemporary Art Week, SACO4, a cultural initiative that constantly pushes
us to break down barriers and reflect on complex, difficult, or little touched upon
issues. Its provocative hallmark is without a doubt one of the principal and most
valuable characteristics, as well as its work methodology that values the creative
processes as much as the works themselves.
Through intensive art workshops for secondary students from northern Chile
and the exhibition Between the Shape and the Mould, with the results of these
processes, the Group SE VENDE, which organizes the event each year, transforms
Antofagasta into a focus of discussion on contemporary art, promoting artistic
education, critical thinking and reflexion.
This is the continuation of a joint effort that started with SACO3 in 2014. In
upcoming years we will continue with this push, being objective in contributing to
the generation of opportunities for civic participation and public debate.
We thank the Ruins of Huanchaca Foundation for hosting this initiative and the
Group SE VENDE Mobile Contemporary Art Platform for inviting us to be part of
this innovative cultural project.
Minera Escondida,
Operated by BHP Billiton

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22

LATIN AMERICAN MAPPING

Alternative Educational Spaces

23

24

ALTERNATIVE MODELS AND QUESTIONING
OF TRADITIONAL EDUCATION IN VISUAL ARTS
In parallel to the workshops that seven artists-professors from Latin America
held in August for more than 80 third and fourth year secondary students from
municipal public schools from the Great Northern region of Chile, SACO4 was
also an encounter for educational spaces or institutions alternative to the official
or traditional systems. Each guest represented one of these projects: Roberto
Huarcaya came from the Centro de la Imagen in Lima, Peru; Alejandro Turell, from
the Tecnicatura en Artes - Artes Plásticas y Visuales from the Instituto Escuela
Nacional de Bellas Artes, Universidad de la República, Rocha, Uruguay; Saidel Brito
from the ITAE or Instituto Superior Tecnológico de Artes de Ecuador, Guayaquil;
Fernanda Mejía from the Taller Multinacional of Mexico City; Marcos Benítez from
the Museo del Barro, Asuncion, Paraguay; Luis Gómez from the ISA, Universidad
de Las Artes, La Habana, Cuba; and Tomás Rivas from Taller Bloc, Santiago, Chile.
These involve initiatives that “diversify and democratize access to learning in
the audio visual area throughout the continent. They arise in the large urban
centres as well as in areas far from university centres offering a more flexible and
autonomous path and making possible the emergence of new artists with great
creative capacity in geographic and social territories where before there was a
great void”, pointed out the director of SACO4, Dagmara Wyskiel.
There is a dream among the organizers of the encounter to form an opportunity in
Antofagasta to systematise education in the visual arts. In an open forum held on
the 25th of August in the Huanchaca Cultural Park, each artist provided details of
his or her respective project. Responding to the needs for context, a resistive but at
the same time proposing effort was transversally acknowledged, involving teaching
centres where creation, reflexion, research or editorializing can converge, driven
mainly by artists, or institutions that even though they are part of a university,
generate models typical of professional education.
ARTISTS-PROFESSORS IN MOTION
The fact that there are seven spaces with these characteristics in Latin America, and
that we know they are not the only ones, but rather that there are various other
examples, speaks of a movement that seeks to change the status of things. In our
countries there are urgencies and severe shortages; a lack of resources in culture
and deficiencies in the public or municipal educational system, where artistic
education tends not to be a priority. Moreover, education itself seems to be a
displaced area subjected to centralism, globalizing influences and the power of the
free market, added to in higher education by insufficient artist education systems
25

faced with this context. The University itself receives a generalized critique. In Art,
at least, there seems to be a lack of opportunities for analysis, dialogue and to
perfect the links with other parts of the system, especially the public.
Faced with this common reality we discovered certain similarities in the group,
for example spaces within universities that have sought to address the problem of
centralism and access to higher education in their countries, and at the same time
being able to influence the local art scene. The ISA or Instituto Superior de Arte
of the Universidad de las Artes of La Habana, for example, with free education
and in processes that have reacted “outside of colonizing copies or models”, has
educated generations of artists in Cuba since 1976. The ITAE or Instituto Superior
Tecnológico de Artes de Ecuador, in Guayaquil, is an educational space, centre for
reflexion, production and artistic research with a local sense, created in 2003 by a
group of artists that drove a parallel scene in Quito, the capital.
There has also been the idea of regional artistic development in the Tecnicatura
en Artes - Artes Plásticas y Visuales, of the Instituto Escuela Nacional de Bellas
Artes of the Universidad de la República, a course of studies that is given in
Rocha, with emphasis on the students’ relationship with a particular context,
in the far southeast part of Uruguay. In a context like that in this country which
was catalogued as a “paradise” within the forum, where learning is free and the
university in Rocha is co-governed along with the students, a special program for
secondary education responds in any case to some pending needs.
A project focused especially on educational establishments inside and outside
the capital has been the Centro de Artes Visuales Museo del Barro, in Asuncion,
Paraguay, which raised an educational opportunity based on guided visits, that
have as a framework the presence of popular, indigenous and contemporary
art collections, relating “art” to historical contexts, with traditions or different
definitions. A program of theoretical seminars has also opened the place to joint
reflexion with the public.
The Centro de la Imagen in Lima, Peru has also been concerned with energizing
a scene, in this case photography. In a context of deep and rich tradition, 22 years
ago when it was formed, there were no opportunities for support or professional
education. Based on this institutional disinterest, it has taken charge of instructing
photographers with an academic level, adding parallel projects connected both
with the city and the national and international circuit: two galleries, a residency
program, plus the organization of the Photography Biennial of Lima and the Lima
Photo Fair.
The Taller Multinacional, seated in Mexico City, and Taller Bloc in Santiago, are
spaces driven by artists that have turned out to be exemplifying as self-managing
26

efforts. There artists are trained under tutors, such as the case of Bloc, and even
professionals from other disciplines, such as in the Taller Multinacional, thanks to
the Virtual Classroom studies program. Both are also places for the production of
works, exhibitions, collective work and discussion that open up opportunities for
exchange through artists’ residencies. Thanks to the art and theory courses on line,
the Taller Multinacional expands its activities beyond the physical space toward
other points of the planet, especially Latin America. Meanwhile, Bloc in Chile has
become a much more dynamic and dialoguing reference point that any university
school of art.
THE END OF THE UNIVERSITY
All these proposals respond to that common state of things where, it seems that
urgent renovations are needed in the models already known and proven for artists’
education, in the teaching of contemporary art, and even in certain art formulas
that circulate in official circuits. However, they are instances that also respond to
local, essentially mutable realities. The particular processes are therefore to some
degree random, susceptible to change, and accommodation. So, questions point
more basically at the role of technology, to new teaching methods in art, to how a
graduating professional faces a problematic working system or field, and finally, on
what is taught when teaching art.
“Once you define what art it, it no longer exists”, points out Luis Gómez, from
Cuba “and if we are going to try to introduce new generations in this field, the
best way is to be as experimental and open as possible. But I don’t think we can
define where the renovations are going. In artistic education I don’t think you can
mathematically plan what might be effective for someone who is younger and sees
the world in a different way. The only way is to learn how they see it and from
there try to instruct them, to push them toward creativity… which is the way to
somehow be able to transform something”.
Alejandro Turell, from Uruguay adds “Many times the term art is used based on
teaching what we supposedly agree that art is, giving someone the instruments to
be able to decode what is a symbolic material. One of the enormous contributions
that art and artistic teaching brings in the XX century is precisely to prepare a
person to deal with uncertainties. Now, when paradigms are multiplied to the nth
degree, art gives us the possibility to deal with ‘n’ forms of possible reality. And
that seems to me to be a mental structure necessary for jumping to the years
ahead… A very strong concern that clearly has to weigh in a teaching centre, and
not only of artists. It must appeal to educating sensitive people who live in society”.
Key in the presentations during the forum were terms such as: autonomous
management (within which there were mixed financing formulas), independence,
decentralization, collective, collaborative, associative and interdisciplinary work,
27

and horizontality. These are formulas experienced based on the particularity
of each space, with their own dynamic, that seek to humanize teaching and
relationships in a system that has tended to commercialize them or subject them
to flows of power, wanting to open this educational and knowledge activity to
the social context. They are modus operandi that are far from those educational
models that tend toward business, toward profit, or the ostracism of the traditional
university.
“Thinking of the occupational field as an objective of the model is dangerous”,
reflects Saidel Brito of Ecuador. “There is an internal debate. There is increasingly
more talk about the end of the university as an institution or at least as we have
understood it in these last 200 years. And perhaps the richness of the experience
of artistic teaching, not for art but rather for knowledge and for society, is an
archetype that can be reencountered in the university; the humanist education
beyond the topic of different disciplines, of specialization in areas that society
requires for work. In artistic education and in the production of the arts in general,
a large part of the discussion of the university world finds a way in which knowledge
can be reencountered and reoriented in that sense”.
Carolina Lara

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THE MUSEO DEL BARRO AND ITS DRIFTS:

STUDENTS AT THE MUSEUM AND SPACE/CRITIQUE

1. THE COLLECTIONS
The Visual Arts Centre/Museo del Barro has been structured through various
endeavours throughout more than forty years of work. The three museums that
make up the Centre were born separately and subsequent circumstances caused
them to be joined in one single building – a special complex in which Popular
Art collections are exhibited (Museo del Barro) as well as Art of Ethnic Groups
(Indigenous Art Museum) and various expressions of Urban Art from Paraguay and
Latin America (Paraguayan Museum of Contemporary Art) that offer the visitor
a broad panorama of the artistic-visual production of Paraguay and some other
places in Latin America.
The Centre relies on a non-profit foundation whose own resources are the
Museum building and the collections. It manages its own funds in order to carry
out its programs of dissemination, exhibition, research and education.
The project was born with the Circulating Collection in 1972. Based on an initiative
by Olga Blinder and Carlos Colombino, this collection of graphic works was travelling
to exhibition halls, rooms and plazas. The Museum started to be constructed in
1979. In 1980, the Museo del Barro was inaugurated in the city of San Lorenzo;
subsequently, in 1988, it was integrated into the current building. In 1995, after
lengthy arrangements, the Museum of Indigenous Art was inaugurated. Osvaldo
Salerno joined the project in the mid 1970’s, and Ticio Escobar at the end of that
decade. Another of its founders was Ysanne Gayet. Both she and Blinder separated
from the project in order to continue their activities in other spaces, but always
remained linked in one way or another. Later, Lia Colombino and Félix Toranzos
joined.
Indigenous Art
The Indigenous Art Museum collection presents the artistic production of the
different ethnic groups that live in Paraguay. These collections were brought
together for the purpose of highlighting the expressive value and the formal quality
of the works more than for their ethnographic, historical and technical references,
the only values that tend to be considered by conventional museums and galleries.
Rural Art
Seeking to give preference to popular expression of the works, the Museo del
Barro supports the self-managed growth of popular forms. This is therefore
accompanied by new aesthetic manifestations that arise, corresponding to the
communities’ own impulses and serving to represent the new conditions that
popular, mestizo, rural and suburban production signifies.
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Urban Art
The Paraguayan Museum of Contemporary Art seeks to constitute a summary of the
transformation of modern Paraguayan art and to significantly mark the essential
points of its direction. It hosts the only permanent collection of current paintings,
drawings, etchings, mixed techniques, objects and sculptures of Paraguay,
with a collection of more than three thousand works, which also include the
production of Latin American and Spanish artists. While the Paraguayan Museum
of Contemporary Art has sought to register contemporary visual production, it has
not neglected important examples of local graphic production.
Documentation and Research Department
The Visual Arts Centre also promotes the documentation, research and
publication of texts regarding the different aspects of indigenous and urban art
and popular culture. This work is carried out through the Documentation and
Research Department (DDI in Spanish), which works on collecting and distributing
expressions of rural and indigenous cultures, always with the intention of
highlighting the county’s multiple cultures.
2. INTRODUCTION OF YOUNG PEOPLE INTO VISUAL ARTS: HISTORICAL VISION
During the 80’s, the Visual Arts Centre/Museo del Barro was an important space
for the education of groups of young adults interested in learning more about
plastic and visual languages with lines other that those that other centres followed.
Traditional institutions continue with a more nineteenth century line of teaching.
That was the case of the School of Fine Arts which had professors but there were
no age restrictions or prior studies required for enrolment.
There are also several workshops in Asuncion, for children, adolescents and
adults. We highlight those of Livio Abramo, Olga Blinder, Cira Moscarda, and Edith
Jiménez, among others. The most interesting workshops for children were held
in the Escolinha de Arte, of the Brazilian Studies Centre, and in the Children’s
Expression Workshop under the direction of Olga Blinder and María Victoria
Heisecke. This last institution ascribed to the line of Education for Art and then
became an Elementary School. Nevertheless, its workshops were very important
for the development of creativity in children and adolescents in a repressive
context like the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, which lasted from 1954 to 1989.
From 1981 to approximately 1993, the Visual Arts Centre/Museo del Barro regularly
held workshops where classes were given for artists and art students of different
ages. Local artists and professors such as Carlos Colombino, Félix Toranzos, Susana
Romero, Osvaldo Salerno and Ticio Escobar were in charge of the permanent
workshops. Short-term workshops were also held with local and foreign artists
such as Judith Burns McCrea, Luis Felipe Noé, Marithé Zaldívar, Dolores Ayerza,
Pedro Agüero and Oscar Manesi.
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There was an event that was decisive in forming this space as a learning centre.
In 1984, the recently inaugurated Centre for Theatre and Visual Arts Studies of
the Universidad Católica closed its activities by order of the institution. Many of
these activities were transferred to the Visual Arts Centre/Museo del Barro. Many
of the artists and teachers that now work in the medium passed through these
workshops1.
In 1993, a tornado destroyed the roof of one of the Museum’s rooms, so it had
to be closed until its reconstruction in 1995. With its reopening, the institution
changed its policies regarding art education. A need was seen to approach art
from an early age and to provide contents to elementary and secondary school
institutions. A program of visits for students was created that year.
In 1999, there arose the possibility of a program for students and graduates that
intended to work based on art but with transversal focuses. In the year 2000, the
Identities in Transit Seminar was started, which would be the embryo of Space/
Critique, a place of inscription for many people interested in art, art philosophy,
literature, etc., who do not have spaces where they can contrast their ideas and
readings regarding these topics.
3. STUDENTS TO THE MUSEUM
In 1995, the Students to the Museum program was created, oriented toward
educating students from the country’s capital, with initial support from the
Senators’ Chamber, the Ministry of Finance and FONDEC (National Fund for
Culture and the Arts). This program consists of a system of guided visits through
the Museum’s facilities to tour the different collections of indigenous, rural and
urban art of Paraguay, in addition to the pre-Colombian art collections and the
temporary exhibitions. The fact that due to practical and budgetary reasons these
visits were reserved for scholastic institutions from the capital area promoted
a series of demands from other institutions located inside the country. These
requests evidenced the need of students from different regions of the country to
have access to cultural services such as these.
Upon confirming this need, we implemented a project of guided visits for boys and
girls from inside Paraguay, this time with the support of private companies in some
cases, and with support from FONDEC in others.
The Students to the Museum program has enabled us to confirm the great
responsibility that a museum institution has regarding the context in which it is

1

These workshops that were held in those years are no longer in effect. The Museum changed its
policy regarding this point, implementing two different programs the implications of which will be
seen later on.

31

inserted, as well as its great educative possibilities. The idea of putting low income
student age sectors of the population in contact with the different expressive
forms that define the cultural profile of Paraguay turns out to be highly gratifying
due to its results.
The Museum program can help the students’ development in that it facilitates an
overall vision of Paraguay’s culture and also a look at its own history through the
creation of the different pueblos and the different times they constitute. Finally,
the work of bringing the images, the voices and the words of the many pueblos
that make up the country to the boys and girls has become especially significant in

pursuit of a democratic project, where the debate on pluralities takes on a decisive
and urgent sense.
For a country like Paraguay, where the population under twenty years old makes
up the majority of its inhabitants, it is essential to promote integral education that
covers the broadest knowledge of the different voices that make up the country’s
cultural panorama, in addition to offering an approach to its artists.
The possibility of a better education constitutes one of the Human Rights pillars,
and concretely, Children’s Rights. In a situation in which the scholastic institutions
in the country do not even have sufficient technical means and adequate
teaching resources, the comparison with other cultural systems can constitute a
stimulus for energizing the learning processes and making them more complex.
The Students to the Museum program continues offering its services. The staff
of intermediaries has grown due to a program established with the Higher Art
32

Institute. Students in the last years of the Visual Arts course of studies take a
training course that provides them with the tools to be Museum guides.
At this time (2015), we are working on a program for small children with the
objective of approaching contemporary art in a playful manner. There is also a
project to make these visits bilingual in Spanish and Guarani, for the population
whose mother language is Guarani. This project has not yet obtained the necessary
budget.
4. SPACE/CRITIQUE SEMINAR
The Space/Critique Seminar has had various programs including Identities in Transit,
Studies on Cultural Critique, Contingency Studies, Post-Colonial Contingency and
Disruptive Images.
This innovative instance is proposed as a seminar in which students who do not
have the opportunity to go into depth in their studies in art philosophy, art theory,
philosophy, aesthetics and humanities in general in the local institutions can do so
in an environment in which they discuss, debate, read, comment and express their
opinions, always accompanied by professionals. The seminar is planned as a space
where all the attendees are members, consolidating itself as a centre of discussion,
suitable not only for incorporating issues little touched upon in Paraguay, but also
to link disciplines and study opportunities that occur separately.
The Seminar constitutes an opportunity for research under the tutorship of
specialists, where the attendees can do small works and written texts, which in
a country with little writing tradition takes on vital importance. There are few
research centres in Paraguay. Researchers and thinkers (above all regarding culture
and art) generally perform their work in an isolated manner. The universities are
not able to cover the concerns of their students and graduates, who are obligated
to work independently.
In its fifteen years, the seminar has published four volumes with the works of the
members. Based on applications, it has been able to be free, thanks to support
from international organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Prince
Claus Foundation, the Juan de Salazar Cultural Centre of Spain, and the Foundation
for Art Initiatives. Nevertheless, it opens and closes according to its programs.
Right now it is on standby until it obtains new funding. Work is being done on that
and on the publication with the members from last year.
Marcos BenĂ­tez (Asuncion, 2015)

33

CENTRO DE LA IMAGEN:
CULTIVATE HUMANITY

The Centro de la Imagen was born as a pioneering academic and cultural project
in teaching photography in Peru, since there was no university or institution that
taught photography as a profession. As a group of photographers, we decided
to fill that void and put into place the adventure of developing a professional
education school that would have a high academic level and would be developing
and forming its own identity.
More than 22 years have passed since this project was materialised and born
under the name of Instituto GaudĂ­ in 1993. In late 1999, the name was changed to
Centro de la FotografĂ­a, becoming a more ambitious and structured proposal that
in 2007 included the areas of design and video, so it was decided to change the
name to Centro de la Imagen, as it is known today.
A series of academic, cultural and commercial proposals are carried out, intended
to position photography in the country, covering different audiences within
photography.
The academic area offers education in photography with a three-year professional
course of studies, a short one-year course of studies, and a large number of
workshops for a vast span of interest: portrait, landscape, digital, and analogic
laboratory, among others, as well as diplomas intended for professional
photographers who want to update their training, and since 2014, the Latin
American Master of Photography, Maldefoco, which has brought together
outstanding international professors and has had great regional acceptance.
In the academic area we also have some social photography projects, where a
group of former students, directed and financed by the school, hold photography
workshops in marginal or vulnerable sectors of the country. We carry out these
projects in association with international NGOs and/or local municipalities.
Two recent examples include a project carried out in the port of Callao with
a group of high risk children, and another in Madre de Dios, a complex zone in
the country, dominated by illegal mining, where workshops are being held with
the differentprotagonists in the conflict: illegal miners, their children, marines in
charge of interdiction of this illegal activity and chestnut gatherers. The results
of the different visions can be seen in an exhibition and an editorial project.
Finally, in the academic area we are experimentally carrying out some visual
education projects for children ages 4 to 10 associated with some schools in Lima.
34

One of the principal conclusions from these twenty years dedicated to education
is that visual literacy should start at a preschool age and be a mandatory subject
on a national level.
Also, a couple years ago the historical archives area was created with a collection
of approximately thirty thousand negatives, mainly from glass plates belonging to
different archives and periods still to be studied, and where our students interested
in historical aspects can be trained, and can practice and do research.

In the cultural area, the Centro de la Imagen has assumed an increasingly more
open and active policy. Some examples are the activities of its two galleries, El Ojo
Ajeno and El Borde, with a significant annual schedule of expositions that serve as
a stimulus and influence for our students, where works by important international
artists as well as professors and former students are shown.
El Borde, in addition to being an exhibition hall is an artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; residency project,
where a group of artists of different nationalities have passed, sharing their
experiences and processes with some of our students, enriching their education.
In conjunction with the Municipality of Lima, we co-organize one of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
biggest events in terms of culture, with nearly 400 thousand visitors: the Lima
Photography Biennial, which is now in its third version, with important exhibitions
throughout the city, where it is sought to maintain a balance between the research
of historical photography and contemporary photography.
With regard to the art market, for the past six years we have organized the
35

International Photography Galleries Fair, Lima Photo, with great success in terms
of audience and sales, thereby generating and promoting collecting in Lima and
the country.
The Centro de la Imagen is a private non-profit project that is financed exclusively
by the income received from the academic side and from some associations
with private companies. It has a policy of inclusion that allows some low income
students with significant potential to be able to study with us. Payment for the
studies is structured in three categories, thereby somewhat enabling higher
income students to be able to finance others. We also offer scholarship options
for working at the school, and finally, 100% financing of the studies in exceptional
cases, where the students start to pay based on their capabilities, six months after
graduating from the school.
The three-year course of studies is composed of six cycles and is recognised by
the Ministry of Education as a technical professional career. The objective of the
school is for our students to be able to develop a critical sense, to be capable
of expressing themselves with their own voice and take a position regarding the
contents of visual communication. Respect for the identity and different interests
and sensibilities of each student is one of the values we seek in academic education
in our school.
An equilibrium is proposed between three areas of education â&#x20AC;&#x201C; technical, theory
and practice. In the first, know-how is imparted, both in digital and analogue
technology, experiencing both construction processes. The second, humanistic
education, has to do with theoretical and conceptual learning, the history of art
and photography, theory of the image, critical analysis, and audio visual language,
among others. Finally, an area that is dedicated to the production and development
of projects, both group and individual, puts into practice and perspective both the
technical and the theoretical learning. The education process ends with a thesis
that requires a final project, with images and a research text and support.
A phrase that condenses the educational identity has to do with these lines from
Fernando Savater, Spanish philosopher, novelist and intellectual: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Educating is
not only preparing employees (professionals, I would add) but above all citizens
and even people who are fully and conscientiously human because educating is
cultivating humanity and not just preparing to triumph in the labour market. That
is the real democratic profitability of educative formation and the acquisition of
that wealth is something the recognition of which must never be abandonedâ&#x20AC;?.
Roberto Huarcaya (Lima, 2015)

36

BRIEF NOTES ON THE ISA
The Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), currently the Universidad Cubana de las
Artes, was officially inaugurated on the 1st of September 1976. Enclaved in the
residential area of Cubanacán, it was irreverently built on the old golf courses of La
Habana Country Club, being designed by three architects: Ricardo Porro, Vittorio
Garatti and Roberto Gottardi, who were occupied respectively in each of the areas
destined for artistic teaching: Music, Visual Arts and Performing Arts. Its initial
structure had three faculties, and was then expanded to include the courses of
study for Dance Art and Audio Visual Communications Media Art.
The ISA currently has four extensions throughout the country called Teaching
Units, one in the province of Camagüey, two in Holguín and one in Santiago de
Cuba. Their work covers pre and postgraduate studies, as well as a broad spectrum
of short and extension courses, including the training of Cuban and foreign
professors who opt for a Doctorate in Art Sciences.
Since its origins, the Institute’s objective has been to provide artistic education free
to everyone equally, without any type of distinction, offering everyone high level
studies in the artistic sphere. Along with other academies such as San Alejandro
(medium level academy2), it has contributed to the education of a large part of
Cuban artists of various generations, at least since 1976 until our time.
Even though the ISA has navigated through different interests and programs of
logical studies as part of artistic evolution, since the majority of professors are
artists in functions that approach teaching, their discussion has always been
how to do teaching that stimulates creation within contemporary art, apart
from colonizing copies or models. Even though it functions that way now,
in its beginnings it intended to educate artists who “described” and thereby
propagated, to say it that way, the achievements of a new society that built the
Cuban revolution; a type of “Socialist realism”, taking as a model the Socialist
Realism that was dictated in the former Soviet Union, from its beginnings until
Perestroika.
During that period, our university even had some Soviet professors, as well as
exchanges of students who were trained in that country, who then became
professors in our country, bringing with them rigorously academic methods,
structures resonant with construction and analysis removed from that rare Cuban

2

Medium level being defined as pre-university art schools.

37

idiosyncrasy. Nevertheless, they offered solidity in artistic construction, at that time
oriented toward academic techniques of artistic production, which later resulted
in conceptual rigor. Curiously, these professors instructed young artists who were
then the new vanguard of Cuban art and the new generation of professors in our
University.
The next decade was controversial, above all in the mid and late 80’s, due to the
strong demand by the political power to get artists to reflect a reality in which
many of them were not interested, that they did not see as “complete” or did not
believe conformed to reality but rather ideals. This did away with discussions that
not only centred on the representation or veracity of that requirement, but also
that made use of that demand by the political power to show the social reality
that it had left out of its ideal image, being seen as a monolithic power in which
any artistic institution, as minimal or small as it may be, is part of it and responds
to it. Some artists tried to dialogue or openly express their intentions, but for
many others the best option for being heard and to avoid censuring was to play
being a part of that power, making use of its rules to question them from inside or
conforming a discourse on them.
The new vanguard of Cuban art, already nearly born in the 80’s, started under
a direct discussion with the establishment imposed by the political power, so it
offered new challenges for teaching, above all because the protagonists of that
vanguard were the professors.
Some objectives of these challenges were focused on filling a void of intellectual
information, especially in the visual arts; in structuring logical and effective
teaching in the understanding between student and teacher based on changing
art and social connections; on teaching based on discussion and dialogue and
not imposed. This led to various experiments, highlighted among which is the
adaptation of “On the Manner of Addressing Clouds” by Thomas McEvilley3, as a
program of study for the visual arts popularly known as “the thirteen contents”.
This adaptation, made during the last half of the 80’s, was able to set up an avantgarde well-informed in the conceptual avatars of art, knowing not only the details
of the artistic construction but also its senses and connotations, expanding, at least
for art produced in Cuba, its spheres of action, resulting in artists instructed with a
convincing body of theory within the interpretive dialogue of art, and maintaining
the utopic desire of art that is possible for everyone, a desire breathed by the
institution from the beginning, but intending a much more conservative result that
what this new vanguard offered.

3

Essay by Thomas McEvilley in which he proposes and describes thirteen contents of the work of art,
published in Artforum, June 1984.

38

Unfortunately, this teaching lowered or changed its standards during the decade of
the 90’s in the so-called “special period”4, a time filled with all types of deficiencies
that marked the consciousness of Cubans so deeply that even now they do not
believe they have gotten out of it, conforming an urgency of survival at any cost.
This was a time of artistic exodus and therefore of a deficit of instructors in the
visual arts and of a dissociation of the utopic platform that art had been following.
Art as well as artistic education navigated between interests of collective discussion
and the impositions of small groups of influence in the circles of art power, in
many cases proposing disparate theories of action, undoubtedly truncating a
path that while necessarily needed to be changed, could be the basis for logical
development.
The “return to the occupation in art”, after an intense experimental stage in
concept and social orientation, was seen as the standard bearer of this new avantgarde of the 90’s, determined to be more “cynical” in order to play the game once
more with the political power as a possible means of escape. A strange time, if we
can define it, since this position of the young artists was affirmed, then was denied
excluding some and adding others later, then today it has been slightly reaffirmed
in seeing many of them return with an international presence. These ups and
downs undoubtedly defined the new waves of pedagogical experiments in the ISA.
On the other hand, the students who enter the ISA have to their credit an artistic
instruction acquired in prior art schools called “middle level” or academies that
are found throughout the country. So they bring with them inherited focuses and
desires, many with a “practical” vision of the profession. This would somehow also
define the direction of education since that time as well as how it is defined today.
Among the artistic exodus, the tempting individual teaching projects of some
renowned artists inside and outside the university field, contrasted with an art
teaching system with almost no economic support or future offering, tied to
education of survival brought precisely by the students and the lapses of instruction
in some areas of contemporary art that the teaching program had, little by little
made it necessary to propose a new strategy for teaching in the university field,
diluting the classical areas of the manifestations of art.
An old idea from the 80’s, but maintaining its teaching for carrying out projects,
unifying all the students each year in just one class, whatever their interests were,
took place under the instruction of a team of professors with experience generally
in each of these zones in particular, operating in unison in the same workshop

4

A time after the collapse of the socialist camp, when the majority of the subsidies coming from the
Soviet Union were rationalized as a political contingency plan.

39

and imposing a specific program prepared jointly for each year of the course of
studies. These professors generally interact and divide between the presentation
of projects and their realization as a critical workshop.
This, which started out being an immediate response, ended up as an interesting
teaching experiment in which each student has a differentiated attention, not only
according to the immediate project presented but also taking into account the
areas of manual arts and/or comprehension that need to be settled. Even so, it
is a decentred method that in each year of the course of studies goes in many
directions; and although it can be interesting, it does not have a philosophy that
binds it together. They are individualities or personalities that prowl around the
same and therefore similar concepts, but in many cases their implementation
resorts to the old colonizing school of following the dictates and modes imposed

Photographs from ISA (Courtesy of Luis G贸mez).

by the art media, seeing models out of context as true and in their incomprehension
not logically removable.
Even though this teaching system, in its experimentation and also in its objective
to provide equal opportunity for everyone to study art free, has obtained results
and has made it possible to develop sensitivities that have enriched Cuban culture,
it has always confronted the course of Cuban reality: yesterday a reality closed to
an open educational system; today, a utopic system for a crude reality, determined
based on an open commercial exchange.
The reality of Cuban art today, a reflection of what Cuba might be in the not too
40

distant future, has stopped being that micro-policy that started in the 80’s related
to power as resistance, and has today become the lackey of an announced micro
economic power, where experimentation, actions of a social or political reference,
and all the other topics “brushed against” by art have become a cliché that
redounds in an economic purpose or a tacit agreement between powers that
intend to promote a type of art that has only managed to chase its own tail since
all the statements are proposed within and only for the Cuban artistic ghetto, and
as we know, what we do or say in the ghetto5 stays in the ghetto . Nevertheless,
the only thing the ghetto as a micro power does not accept is criticism, just like
the political power, since both are just mutual reflections. In the end, our art is a
satisfied and controlled art.
This is the reality that new students face. Of course, it is much more complex and
intricate, like any other reality. We see an example of this plot in the delay in the
arrival of digital technologies, evidently for being communication technologies,
creating a “technological limbo”, or when they arrive they are implemented
incompletely, without the option to create alternatives, and offering an underutilization and over-valuation of digital objects, making minimal use of their
functionality and maximum use of their aesthetics as a representation of social
status.
Our objective in creating a New Media laboratory in 2007 was to make use of that
curiosity for fashion as an affirmation of any avant-garde that comes along with the
young art students, offering an expressive tool within the art media that is new for
the Cuban environment but already worn out outside of it, a philosophy of shared
information and recycling in an environment where technology was “convincingly”
vetoed, along with alternative future employment outside or within the margins of
the artistic media, but also to centre the discussion of art on parameters relatively
unknown to the students, where they had no cliché to express, propitiating their
own creative solutions and revising our ideas of art without prejudices.
These objectives remain far below the urgencies to discuss. But in this decision
to “falsify”, a clean slate on which we could or try to leave out any futile egotist
intention and discuss the problems of art based on our best frankness, would
perhaps be a good start.
Luis Gómez (La Habana, 2015)

5

Referring to the Cuban intellectual environment.

41

THE ITAE AND ITS 12 YEARS OF LIFE
In the last decades of the XX century, Guayaquil experienced a cultural and
artistic stagnation that extended until the end of the 90’s. In the first decade
of the XXI century, a new artistic scenario has bloomed that has converted the
city into the country’s epicentre of visual arts. This cultural rebirth is the result
of the convergence of multiple elements that have destroyed old structures and
behaviour models within the art world. Among these elements is the emergence
of a new generation of artists, the creation of advanced cultural institutions,
the implementation of new cultural policies, the forming of audiences avid for
contemporary arts, the arrival of new professional critics, the history of art and
visual studies, budding collecting of contemporary art, the resonance of the works
of young artists in the country’s most important professional events, and the reupdating of salons and biennials. Nevertheless, the component that has had an
especially leading role and impact on these transformations is the creation of the
Instituto Superior Tecnológico de Artes del Ecuador (ITAE).
The birth of ITAE occurred in the context of the deep economic crisis that Ecuador
experienced in the late 90’s and that resulted in dollarization of the national
economy in the year 2000. The economic crisis had direct repercussions in the art
world. As a result of it, the market suffered a devastating blow: the great majority
of galleries had to close their doors after many years of work; the high prices that
some firms had reached were pulverized; public collections, also as a result of a lack
of professional arbitrage, suffered an unprecedented devaluation. Paradoxically,
this big shakeup of the cultural system allowed new actors and opportunities for
contemporary artistic practices to appear. Artists who had been producing with
other creative criteria and exploring with new languages since the 80’s and 90’s
found space within the institutional art circuit.
In 2001, the artist Xavier Patiño, former member of La Artefactoría6, called on
other cultural actors to develop an institution of higher art education in the city.
The architect Freddy Olmedo, Regional Director of Culture of the Central Bank
of Ecuador, accepted the project and in conjunction with the Municipality of
Guayaquil, presented the file for its creation to the country’s higher education
governing authorities in April 2003. The Instituto Superior Tecnológico de Artes
del Ecuador (ITAE) was born in the Arts and Occupations Plaza Project (PAO in
Spanish), carried out in the city’s old South Civil Centre and was approved through

6

The Artefactoría was an artistic group that appeared in 1982 in the city of Guayaquil. Critics consider
it a pioneer in contemporary art in Ecuador. The group was dissolved in 1989 with the exhibition
Caníbal held at the Municipal Museum of Guayaquil.

42

a resolution of the National Higher Education Council (CONESUP) in February
20047.
From the beginning, the Institute’s mission was to educate generations of
qualitatively different artists who would contribute to strengthening national
culture and directly influence the growth of the local, regional and national
artistic scene, with a solid projection in the international sphere. Today, the artists
educated on its premises have achieved a notable presence in the country’s
most important professional competitions, but what is truly significant about
these academic results is the daily construction, with the maximum rigor, of new
dynamics of creation, critique and comprehension of artistic work.
Currently, 4308 students are enrolled in the three courses of study at ITAE, young
people who have the opportunity, regardless of their socioeconomic condition, to
study art as an option in their lives, who in a few years will become fundamental
actors in the city’s cultural scene.
ITAE’s contributions to the cultural development of the city of Guayaquil in the
XXI century have been considerable. The Institute has become a space of rupture
that in its twelve years of institutional life has forged a particular philosophy on
teaching art, becoming not only an educational space but also a centre for reflexion,
production and artistic research. It is a space for exchange and confrontation that
ends up binding together a significant body of artists and intellectuals committed
to the local cultural tradition, with advanced criteria of contemporary culture.
ITAE’s theoretical-methodological proposals come from different teaching focuses,
originating in the ongoing and historical tension between art and its teaching. The
fertile dialogue initiated between art and the teaching of art is part of the Institute’s
educational processes. Students are enabled in the principal domains of their
profession; they are familiarized with multiple historical focuses and cultural keys,
from the start of their career, which enables them to acquire discursive capacities
and vast cultural references. In educating, the ITAE strengthens the development
of processes of creative self-awareness and forges critical and questioning views
regarding art; it also covers traditional knowledge and techniques in its curriculums,
generating abilities and skills that broaden the students’ aesthetic thinking as well

7

In the early years, Visual Arts was the only course of studies offered, an artistic area on which the
founding project was based and the artistic-teaching proposal that marked the institution’s directives. In
2005, Santiago Roldós and Pilar Aranda, directors of Muégano Theatre, joined the project creating the
ITAE Independent Theatre Laboratory, the embryo of the Theatre Course of Studies, which along with
the Sound and Music Production course of studies make up ITAE’s current academic offering.

8

The 161 applicants who are currently taking the Placement and Entry course must be added to this
number, equivalent to a student population of 591 young people.

43

as their understanding of artistic languages and their expressive possibilities.
The effectiveness of ITAE’s Teaching Model is in the capacity that the students
acquire to make use of the diverse aesthetic genealogies and for them to conform
to the purposes of their artistic research. For that it is essential to understand art
as a cultural construct, and to have a theoretical and critical platform that enables
the student to ably handle the different languages learned, both the techniques
and the ideologies that make them up.
The dialogue that the ITAE initiates between tradition and contemporaneousness
is manifested in the curricular structure of the courses of study and in the way
in which the students, from a critical conception, work well together with the
disciplines and the traditional occupations that give body to the artistic practices.
Even though Joseph Kosuth conceives, correctly, of art as an activity outside the
mixture of colours and the manipulation of materials or plastic elements, the
Institute’s curriculums also place a special accent on that knowledge. The apparent
conventionality of the school’s educational proposal is strengthened to the extent
the students undermine and destroy the substantialism that those disciplines hide.
One of the most important contributions of the ITAE is the conception of the student
during the educational trajectory as a potential professional. It is significant that
the Institute identifies the student not as a student of arts but as a student-artist.
This posture could be objectionable according to certain teaching criteria that
consider that a professional in arts is not formed in the formal artistic teaching
systems, and that there only the basic know-how and the necessary tools are
acquired to slowly become a professional after graduating; that is, the assumption
that the school does not form the artist, but rather that life forms the artist.
This way, the Institute crystalizes a teaching model that conceives of artistic
creation as something teachable, deactivating the idea commonly held by the
traditional art disciplines of art as a trade; and that based on interdisciplinary
practices forms artists with a capacity to coherently place themselves in the
cultural weave and efficiently choose the creative possibilities regarding a certain
tradition. The artistic potential formed in the ITAE is evidenced in the complexity
of thinking that reflects the works of its students, as well as in the symphony that
they initiate with the research most suggestive of contemporary culture.
The Institute’s major contribution to the city’s cultural scenario has been the
gestation of a new generation of artists. A significant number of creators have
emerged from its classrooms, who today constitute a critical mass with a leading
role in professional art circuits. ITAE students have now achieved more than 130
awards and mentions in the salons and biennials of the city and the country, which
confirms the academic excellence advocated by the institution. The influence of
44

the Instituteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s educational processes has been decisive in the new directions art
has taken in the city. The generation of artists that has been forged constitutes a
significant fact for the national culture.
Today, new and exciting horizons are appearing, such as the joining of the Institute
with the rising Universidad de las Artes (UA), which is being carried out in the city
of Guayaquil. The wager that ITAE has made for contemporaneousness and for an
artistic-teaching proposal emanating from the artists themselves, grant this higher
education institution a very particular legitimacy.
The joining between the UA and the ITAE will enable no longer duplicating efforts
in the education of artists, in a social context where the understanding of art as
a profession has historically met with great resistance, and mutually consolidate
processes for the sake of greater strengthening of the cultural scenario of the
city and the country. In addition, this integration should tend toward something

Photographs from ITAE (Courtesy of Saidel Brito).

much bigger and essential for the functioning of higher education in the arts in
Ecuador: the creation of a subsystem of national artistic teaching that involves
all educational levels. This subsystem, in addition to propitiating proper and
systematic teaching of the arts from elementary and secondary through university
levels, would also be joined with the rest of the education system in general, which
would generate a transcendental change in the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture.
Saidel Brito (Guayaquil, 2015)

45

TALLER BLOC:

AN INDEPENDENT MODEL
The invitation that SACO 2015 made to Taller Bloc, expands on one of the
most difficult objectives of our project: the dissemination or communication
of contemporary art in Chile. For that reason, I would like to start this text by
expressing gratitude for the invitation. As representative of Taller Bloc, on this
occasion of the workshop to be held in the city of Antofagasta, I hope to be able to
pass on our deepest sense of existing, the simple act of sharing.
Taller Bloc is a project founded by five Chilean artists: Catalina Bauer, Rodrigo
Canala, Rodrigo Galecio, Gerardo Pulido and Tomás Rivas. Installed in a former
bakery in the commune of Providencia (J.M. Infante 1428), since late 2009 we
have occupied and shared two ample warehouses where we produce and carry
out a series of activities dedicated to the production, formation and dissemination
of visual arts.
During these years, this independent art space has been positioned as a place
for encounter for artists and persons linked to Chilean and also South American
contemporary art. Moved by the intention to be accessible and open, connected
with other contexts, we have sought various mechanisms to increase exchange, not
only on a local level, but also internationally, establishing collaborative relations
with other art spaces and institutions: Letrasenlínea (Department of Literature in
the Universidad Alberto Hurtado), URRA Art Residences in Argentina, School of Art
of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Molécula (online radio) and others.
Taller Bloc offers opportunities for dialogue and reflexion regarding contemporary
art, the need for which, in fact, propitiated its creation after regular “workshop
visits” (discussion on the respective jobs) among its current members. BLOC was
founded based on the friendship and at the same time the urgent need to support
ourselves and to mutually strengthen ourselves, which motivated the creation of a
new platform by which to carry out and disseminate its work and which since 2010
is part of the Annual Tutorship Program.
CULTURAL JUNCTURE
Currently, those of us on the project are the artists Rodrigo Canala, Gerardo Pulido,
Rodrigo Galecio and the author. Together, we have the active participation of the
artists Paula Dittborn, acting as tutor, and Peter Morse, who is currently a member
of the board of directors.
The geographic location of the building has been fundamental for Taller Bloc,
since it is located in a traditional barrio of the city of Santiago, whose identity
survivaldepends precisely on the strength and diversity of its cultural life. In this
46

sense, the closeness to Barrio Italia, vigorous for its resurgence as a centre of
activities associated with art, design, night life, the culinary and furniture industry,
turns out to be strategic since Bloc along with other projects such as the Galería
Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo, Mil M2, Taller Infante and Taller Julio Prado, among
others, amplify the radius of the area’s cultural activity.
After five and a half years of operation, Taller Bloc continues seeking to expand
its contribution to the local and regional media in Chile. The regular meetings of
the team and the board of directors obligate us to review our management model
and update the way we communicate the activities we carry out. The project, in
its three principal branches: 1, works production workshop; 2, dissemination of
contemporary art in the form of exhibitions, speeches and publications; and 3,
collective education of artists in tutorship, seeks to sustain a critical view in the
reflexion regarding the production of our own works as well as the tasks that each
one completes within the project.
Taller Bloc is based on trust and friendship. In generating contents, the
professionalism with which each of the agents carries out their respective tasks
prevails. Finally, the management model is an “independent model”. Each of the
members fulfils various types of management functions, such as administration
and finance, management of economic resources through sponsorships and
donations, the edition of contents, supervision of infrastructure and of the tools
storeroom. Also, Bloc has a board of directors that decides on issues related to
the institution’s orientation from the teaching standpoint, curatorial and editorial
criteria, among others.
The definition: SPACE FOR ARTISTS MANAGED BY ARTISTS, known in the Englishspeaking world as “artists run space”, admits greater agility in decision-making
and allows avoiding over bureaucratization of cultural management. It also allows
the possibility of a type of mixed financing in which both private and state funds
converge through contests. Also, it is fundamental that we are allowed to develop
a teaching or production model that does not strictly conform to university
standards (too much imbued with the logic imposed by a scientific model, its
verification systems and the Declaration of Bologna of 1999, which accredits this
logic as part of universal higher education), which results in greater freedom of
artistic experimentation, and in turn, dialogue with the artists from the Annual
Tutorship Program.
THE SPACE AND SELF-MANAGEMENT
The physical space that houses Bloc is a building that was constructed in the early
XX century in the commune of Providencia, which was designed for a bakery
and its respective sales outlet to be installed. This origin makes the architectonic
space one that has appropriately supported the change of function, since
the amplitude of the spaces has facilitated the implementation of workshops
47

for artists, both individuals and groups. These premises, which previously housed
industrial ovens for large scale production (at least at that time) of bread and that
functioned first with wood and then with gas, have enabled not only the realization
of tutorship program with infrastructure the size of which is appropriate for the
presentation of works and their discussion, but has also permitted the functioning of
a program of contemporary art exhibitions and speeches sustained over time. Due
to the vernacular nature of the interior design and the singularity of the building,
BLOC has become a work context very much appreciated by contemporary visual
artists who explore the space and the place as supports for their work, and is also
propitious for holding electronic music concerts, performances and the realization
of works of contemporary dance.
In Chile, the topic of self-management in fields associated with culture is marked
by a great disadvantage: the scarce comprehension on the part of society as a
whole of the importance of the arts for the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall development. This
has to do with very poor education in Chile. The upper classes basically receive a
good technical education but a poor education in arts and humanities; while the

Speech by the Argentinean artist Pablo Siquier in Bloc (September 2004) / Space aimed at the
workshop in which 4 artists work (photographs courtesy of Taller Bloc).

lower income sectors obtain a fair, or frankly very poor education in general,
particularly in the area of the arts. If hours of education in the arts and humanities
have been taken out of the educational system, it is clear that our authorities are
not interested in encouraging critical and reflexive thinking, but rather the contrary.
Our foundation, given its teaching orientation, humbly proposes to occupy a role
in the sense of starting to fill this void.
TomĂĄs Rivas (Santiago, 2015)
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THE IMPACT OF THE TECNICATURA EN ARTES (ASSOCIATE DEGREE IN
ARTS) ON THE ARTISTIC SCENE IN ROCHA
As part of a process to decentralize teaching, the Universidad de la República
de Uruguay (UDELAR) has promoted Regional Centres where graduate and
postgraduate courses are given. The Instituto Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes
(IENBA) is thereby present throughout the national territory, an institution that was
closed during the dictatorship and reopened in 1985 with the return to democracy.
The Associate Degree in Arts – Plastic and Visual Arts, a three-year course of
studies directed mainly at students from the region, has been offered at the Centro
Universitario Regional Este (CURE) since 2013, with classes given by professors of
the Licenciatura en Artes that is only given in Montevideo. The subject disciplineof
the course of studies fosters the university study of the diversity of languages that
intervene in the contemporary panorama of plastic and visual arts, not only in
aspects of artistic-cultural production, but also in the educative area.
Among the general objectives of the Associate Degree are the thematic integration
of the different fields, which is made compatible through the academic structure
of the work in teams of teachers, with interdisciplinary dialogue, practices already
foreseen in the structure of the Universidad de la República by areas and in the
work areas of the Instituto Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, which should continue
to be encouraged. Curricular flexibility, necessary in university education, and the
exchange with local realities and their recipients are also procured, according to
their singularities and university principles in general.
The course of studies is conceived not only as a technological aspect, but as the
result of the social relations involved in its production, joining three aspects at
the academic level of the university activity: the transmission of knowledge, the
creation of knowledge based on research and its social relation through extension.
The interest is in completely educating people, strengthening their different
capacities so they can act ethically and with the greatest competence in the
discipline and other emerging fields in society, critically influencing it, also
promoting research of procedures in art technologies and practices, as well as
insertion in the national and regional reality according to collective needs in terms
of art production. The idea is for the students to know the medium in which they
will perform, and with that, the prioritization of a solid and necessary education
for adequate access, without difficulties of adaptation to the transformations
of the disciplines and of professional practice, making it suitable for progressive
education and for other modes of ongoing education.
49

A creator who graduates from the Universidad de la República must be capable
of generating artistic products at the best level, with ethical and aesthetic values,
being able to interpret the contents of diverse artistic products and relate them
with their more or less explicit contexts. This involves understanding the needs
of society based on the possibilities offered by the different forms of artistic
production.
Teaching is imparted in the framework of these general directives. In Rocha,
CURE occupies a singular geographical enclave, situated in a building recently
constructed by the Universidad de la República de Uruguay outside the city, on
the route that connects the country’s capital with southern Brazil. It is a place
completely dominated by the rural landscape, by the Uruguayan countryside with
its plains and extensive pastures, some beef cattle and the subtle presence of
stately palm trees. This loads the teaching experience with a sense of liberation.
The fact of moving to give classes in a “distant” place in the educative imagination
(200 kilometres from Montevideo, the capital), generates an interior space of
enormous reflexion and projection. In the 100 kilometres before reaching Rocha,
the anthropic presence on the landscape is practically nil. Almost everything is
countryside, small hills on both sides of the route and some fields.
Perhaps one of the first things you should ask yourself as a professor is about
the destination of what you impart as knowledge. What will be the future of
that imparted knowledge? In an area where art has not been mainly a source of
production, the punctual attendance of students interested in their education
surprises us. Their commitment is contagious and makes you happy. Their daily
commute to this educational centre justifies a personal effort and they get into
the collective taxi.
The art teaching experience is given feedback through the incorporation of new
teaching paradigms in addition to conceptual approaches that arise and that are
necessarily circumscribed on the environment where active teaching is carried
forward. Both the determinants and the possibilities become major tools for
integral education. The local concerns, the questioning regarding the possible
state of “development”, the impact and change involved for the biodiversity zone,
the exploitation of natural resources, the different forms of life of the people in
the region (from artisan fishermen, teachers, artisans, surveyors, etc.), make up a
set of topics that are intrinsic and that are clearly reflected in the art research of a
good part of the student population.
As part of the activities of the Free Aesthetic-Pedagogic Orientation Workshop that
I am in charge of, and that covers three years of the Associate Degree, the concepts
mentioned above dynamically provide the backbone. These topics are enriched by
possessing and making possible a critical, analytical and ethical view toward them.
Also, knowing and going into depth in both technical and practical approaches of
50

Uruguayan and universal art enable contrasting the past and present faced with
a future which in the contemporary acceleration becomes increasingly more
uncertain and slippery for us.
Inquiries are made regarding new art languages and research is done regarding
the expressive possibilities of materials typical of the region, from the composition
of certain clays found there for making ceramic pastes, to small reeds that are
incorporated into the palettes that delineate traces with pigments that are also
local. The different mono-print techniques and the survey of the local plants;
digital photography, from poetic documentary value or as an instrument capable
hybridizing other languages. This way, it is not just the motive that prevails in the
analysis and generation of a visual image, but rather from its origin, the instrument
that conformed it becomes a particularly important symbolic element.

Photographs from CURE (Courtesy of Alejandro Turell).

At the same time and in that same space, other professionals work who are
studying, for example, human settlements in the region a least eight thousand
years old: biologists, chemists, anthropologists, archaeologists, computer
experts, art professors, etc., which turns CURE, Centro Universitario Regional
Este, into a pole for generating knowledge and understanding of the territory
with an interdisciplinary character, research and extension, a place of enormous
importance and singularity.
Alejandro Turell (Rocha, 2015)

51

SHORT TESTIMONY ON THE TALLER MULTINACIONAL
1. RECOUNT OF WHAT WE HAVE BEEN DOING.
The Taller Multinacional is being built as we go; it is a product of a constant review
of what we are doing. It operates from Mexico City and is made up by Miguel
Rodríguez Sepúlveda and Fernanda Mejía. Eventually, depending on the project,
other collaborators will be added.
The first time we used the name was for the realization of Emergía in Caracas
in 2007, a work by Miguel Rodríguez Sepúlveda. It started as a game, with the
idea of being backed by an “institution” in order to facilitate arrangements for and
therealization of new artistic ideas, pointing out the insufficiency of the artist’s
name when presenting a project.
During 2008 and 2009, we had the opportunity to hold Emergía in some cities
in South America: Bogotá (Colombia), Quito (Ecuador), Belo Horizonte and Sao
Paulo (Brazil), Rosario, Córdoba and Buenos Aires (Argentina). The trip was quite
stimulating; we could see the way artists and agents work and are organized, how
they relate with the cultural institutions and how they operate independently.
We came back in December 2009, very enthused to start the next stage of Taller
Multinacional.
We started with a study group: Círculo del Ocio. During 2010, we met as a group
of artists every fifteen days to address topics of common interest, and all the
participants were encouraged to propose texts as well as topics to address, with
the main theme being artists’ social condition. The meetings had a look of group
therapy, a time to vent, to share experiences without arriving at a concrete action.
For 2011, the meetings mutated into Viernes Social: talks with artists and other
professionals from the visual arts. Every 15 days we invited an artist, curator or
researcher to talk to us about their work. This was operating until 2013. A record
of the discussions from 2012 and 2013 can be found on the following link::
http://www.tallermultinacional.org/category/viernes-social/
Simultaneously, Irving Domínguez, one of the active members of the Círculo del
Ocio, proposed a new work dynamic: develop a collective process for interpreting
documents, for which visits would be made to documentation centres dedicated
to contemporary art. In 2011, we held Derivado, an interpretation exercise in the
documentation centre of the Carrillo Gil Museum. The report can be seen at:
http://www.derivado.tallermultinacional.net/
In 2012, the Círculo del Ocio was reactivated in virtual format with the topic of art
52

and education. A horizontal work dynamic was proposed, trying to collaboratively
promote the proposed contents. The report is found in the following link:
http://www.ocio.tallermultinacional.net/mod/page/view.php?id=231 (you need
to click on “enter as guest”).
In parallel, starting in 2011 we initiated the implementation of our Virtual Classroom.
The objective is to provide an educational offering that enables expanding the
horizon of the artistic practice. We open an annual call to receive proposals for
courses. The offering includes courses on cultural management, curatorship,
museography artistic pedagogy, art theory and art history. Eventhough we are an
independent space and our courses are short, it is essential for us to think that we
do the work of teaching, above all in virtual learning environments, so each year we
perform two types of training for the tutors: an initial one, for those who join the
Virtual Classroom team for the first time; and another for those who have already
had experience in working with us. In this training, different topics are addressed
related to virtual learning environments, for example, technical aspects on how to
use the platform, what education is like for adults, what are the particularities of
students in virtual environments, the importance of establishing teaching guides
and learning objectives linked to activities, etc.
It is important to note that not all the teachers of visual arts and similar subjects
have formal training in teaching, so we find that it is essential to provide our tutors
with a space for reflexion regarding their educational work.
In 2012, we signed an agreement with IDARTES (Instituto Distrital de las Artes in
Bogotá, Colombia) for an artist from Bogota to do a six-week residency in Mexico
City. In 2012, we received Andrés Bueno; in 2013, Santiago Calderón; and in the
second half of 2015, Laura Muñoz will be with us. The results of the residency can
be seen at:
http://www.tallermultinacional.org/category/residencias/
2. WHAT HAS UNDERTAKING THIS PROJECT INVOLVED?
In our case we have been building based on needs we are identifying. In the
beginning, intuition traced a first route, but then it was necessary to think
seriously about the human resources and materials available; that is, the capacity
for materializing the ideas. Also, the temporary nature of what we want to do.
In thinking about resources, it was essential to improve and even acquire tools
for planning, administration and evaluation. In the case of the latter, more than a
tool to measure the qualitative and quantitative results of projects, we consider it
necessary that it becomes a custom, a habit that enables us to constantly review
the purposes and the ways of proceeding.
Sustaining yourself independently is a great challenge in various senses: economic,
53

emotional and intellectual. Economically, you have to find a way to guarantee the
continuity of the project that does not place your equity at risk and that includes
a fair payment for your work. Intellectually, you are obligated to learn new things
that maybe when you started your Bachelor’s Degree in Arts an even your Masters,
you didn’t think you were going to use, or you were not very interested in, such as
administration or management, or any other know-how that the project demands.
Emotionally, you need to have sufficient strength to continue and to find solutions
to the problems that arise.
The projects that economically depend on your other work and/or on grants tend
to be short duration projects, where the satisfaction of realizing them goes far
beyond what happens to them in professional or economic terms. In training for
cultural companies given by the Secretary of Culture of the Federal District, they
told us that the waiting time to determine if a company of this type will function
or not is longer compared to other types of endeavours because the people linked
with the culture sector are much more motivated and the desire to carry out their
ideas is very strong, which leads them to work more hours for a longer time and
for lower salaries. This high motivation and desire can be a double-edged sword:
on one hand, if you are able to plan and objectively evaluate, you can make better
decisions. On the other hand, if you are only led by the desire to realize an idea,
the road can become long and frustrating.
In my particular case, the experience of making the Taller Multinacional work
has been very enriching professionally and personally. I have learned about
administration, management, accounting, scheduling, teaching, human relations,
etc., and also to value the resources we have, as small as they may be; to try to find
solutions and ways to carry out the projects there are.
3. OUR EXPERIENCE IN THE EDUCATIONAL AREA.
Many of the artists and graduates with bachelor’s or master’s degrees in Visual Arts
are professionally trained in teaching. Some decide to continue their education
with specializations in teaching for the arts. For others, their knowledge is based
on empirical experience.
In the online version of the Círculo del Ocio, we want to address a process to
reflect on teaching activity based on empirical experience. For that, a study group
structure without hierarchies was proposed, when meant a big challenge both
for us in the role of organizers as well as for the participants. At the end of the
cycle the sensation of having been a “nice or dear failure” hung in the air; each
member evaluated and found positive and negative results. What remains for us
is that if collaborative processes have an invisible hierarchical structure, the leader
that organizes is not easy to substitute or replace, both for his or her capacity to
organize and for the responsibility that work involves. Being self-didactic requires
54

much discipline and commitment with the learning process itself, more than when
it is done in a group.
The experience of the Círculo del Ocio had repercussions in the way we want to
build our Virtual Classroom. We took on a greater commitment to understand
education for adults in virtual learning environments. We are not only concerned
with keeping a technological platform up to date but also with thinking about
teaching formats for the courses and providing accompaniment to the tutors.
The majority of our students are artists, students and graduates with bachelor’s
and master’s degrees in visual arts and similar courses of study. Also, due to
the particular nature of virtuality, we have students and tutors from all of Latin
America. We do not work directly with children or a youth population, but we are
interested in offering courses related to artistic education. In that sense, courses
have been given on curatorship and educative museography, and theories and
practices in the design and planning of artistic and cultural interventions with
children, among others.
4. OTHER ASPECTS ON ART AND ARTISTIC EDUCATION.
We are living in difficult times; there is a budget cut in the Mexican cultural sector
that jeopardizes the programs of support and scheduling of the venues, as well
as the job security of the people who work in culture. The arts course is part of
the elementary and secondary curriculum but the teachers assigned to it are not
necessarily the appropriate professionals. There is a crisis in public elementary
education.
An important point to analyse is how the educative component is almost mandatory
in the cultural projects that are managed based on independence and how that
mandatory nature modifies the initial intent of the project. Increasingly, the
support offered by public as well as private entities seeks to benefit a vulnerable
population, granting and requiring art to have a social usefulness withmeasureable
results. While art makes our lives better in the sense that it help us to think and see
other perspectives and views of the world and should be a basic necessity, placing
the responsibility for generating social fabric and resilience on the shoulders of
art is disproportionate when there is not enough governmental intervention to
resolve core issues such as unemployment, social security, corruption, injustice,
etc.
Thinking about or planning what young people require for their education in arts
involves thinking about the medium in which we develop as artists or culture
professionals. We continue facing programs of Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts
focused on educating artists without taking into account that the field of art is
made up by multiple actors and a variety of needs according to the context: market
55

and cultural policies that support the production of works, spaces for art critique
and theory, dissemination and promotion, approaching new audiences, etc.
The problem of generating new audiences for art manifests a void in artistic
education programs that is aggravated with contemporary art that is basically
produced for a specialized audience: curators, art gallery directors, collectors,
historians, researchers, critics and other artists, an immense minority. How much
interest is there in artists, curators and agents in contacting other audiences?

How important is this topic on the agendas of seminars, discussions or specialized
encounters? What would be the work of artistic education in basic teaching
regarding the generation of new audiences for art? How effective is the link of the
museum, the university, the art fairs and galleries with those potential audiences?
Some questions that indicate we still have a long road to cover.
Fernanda MejĂ­a (Mexico City, 2015)

56

57

58

INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE DOMES

59

60

TOWARD A GENERATIONAL OVERFLOW
In the middle of winter, on the austere and arid esplanade of the Huanchaca Cultural
Park, seven domes bloomed, within which a significant transformation process
was perceived, not only with regard to art but also in a human sense. Among the
ephemeral spaces that made up an art camp in the form of a question mark on
the plane, everything was filled with life: shouts, laughter, looks, questions, ideas,
movement. It was a festive and intense experience that undoubtedly marked a
before and after in the lives of its participants and all of us who joined in this
process. Many had the opportunity for the first time to share with peers from
other nationalities present in the region of Antofagasta, from other communes
and barrios; also with people of different cognitive capacities. We received a
master class in tolerance and companionship, desirable in the adult world.
For one week, 84 young people disconnected from their schools and daily
duties; 36 of them coming from communes outside of Antofagasta, carried out
a residency in the city. Their sole objective was to dedicate themselves to art,
learning, producing and enjoying, opening horizons to dimensions other than the
ordinary, real and not virtual, accompanied by teachers and tutors. These latter,
mostly students or recent graduates of diverse university courses of study, fulfilled
an important role, being assistants for the guest artists, monitors of the groups,
and finally guides during the 17 days of the exhibition. This way, they shared
everything they experienced with the audience, personal learning and production
experiences. Culture workers: Christian Ochoa, Daniela Castillo, Marcelo Peñailillo,
Gabriela González, Paulina Quinteros, Nidia Maldonado and Javier Ramos, today
constitute a seedbed for the critical mass and emerging local scene.
This intense week signified a challenge for each artist. The majority had no
teaching experience in school. The young people, in turn, had no references; they
did not know what a workshop meant and what was really going to be expected
of them in a space where the unconventional or experimental was not just about
the lack of walls, uniforms or grades. However, we realized that they adapted
easily and enthusiastically to these unusual conditions, these spaces and dynamics
accommodated them, awakening confidence and empowerment. Little by little,
starting from the passive calm of a classroom they began to look up, laugh, express
and defend their ideas, and finally taking one of the teacher’s words for it: that
everything they did was fine and that there is no error that doesn’t make sense.
“In silence first, like a volcano awakening…” commented another guest, surprised
by the dynamic that was resulting organically and that like a plant grew day by day
in front of our eyes, giving unusual fruits, rare in these latitudes and very nutritive,
truly diverse, reflexive and coherent installations.
The results of the workshops made up the exhibition Between the Shape and the
61

Mould, which was open to the public between the 29th of August and the 15th of
September 2015. In the temporary art campus, combining seven geodesic domes
designed and constructed by Camanchaca Movimiento Creativo, the young people
shared with us and among themselves their talents, sensitivities and interests.
They showed the community the creative process they had covered during those
intense days together with the relevant teachers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; artists from Latin America.
We closed the exhibition Between the Shape and the Mould with 2,500 visitors.
The cultural revitalization of the mining capital has been becoming a reality in front
of our eyes.
We hope that this experimental format generates a transition, not only of artists
but for all reflexive and creative individuals capable of materializing a qualitative
transformation that we all want in the local as well as global context, regardless of
the life buoy that each one has been able to grab onto in the neoliberal swamp.
Dagmara Wyskiel

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EXERCISES TO EXPLOIT THE CLASSROOM
WORKSHOP 1. CONCEPTUAL ART AND GEOMETRY.
In ¿Tiene la humanidad una posibilidad de sobrevivir final y exitosamente en el
planeta tierra y, sí es así, cómo? (Does humanity have a chance to finally and
successfully survive on planet Earth, and if so, how?), by Tomás Rivas, the work
was based on the works and thoughts of the U.S. architect and inventor Richard
Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983), creator of the geodesic dome, for which the
young people set up an installation based on concepts such as sustainability,
ecosystems and cooperation.
A dome is set up on top of an icosahedron triangle structure that is successively
sustained thanks to two types of force: compression and tension, or by an effect
of tensegrity, as the Chilean artist explains. This type of construction, a sort of
cupola, was used in SACO4 to make room for the art workshops in the middle of
the esplanade of the Ruins of Huanchaca, serving as a topic for Rivas to creatively
work with the students based on geometry, technology and human relations.
The idea of tensegrity, for example, was a symbol of empathy. For that, he started
out by inviting them to ask themselves about cases in the region that would not
generate empathy among the population, based on industrial development and
poor political decisions. So they discussed the impact of the thermoelectric plants

63

in Mejillones, the case of the Rocket Park in Calama (that had been sold by the
Municipality to constructors) or the Events Plaza in Antofagasta, place where the
National Holiday temporary installations are set up and where trees were removed.
Returning to the dome and to Buckminster Fuller’s ideas from the sixties, the focus
was on the organic nature of a geometric system and on the relationship with the
surroundings based on concepts such as tensibility and synergy, very characteristic
of the deep economy, of the definition of ecosystem and sustainability, he explains.
Architecture, Nature and Technology were keys therefore, for the young people to
elaborate their own vision of the planet. The Utopia.
The key question, what is technology’s impact on us, also causes a view about our
place in the universe, on the future of society and on the artist’s role in all this. The
ideas came out in the conversations induced by the professor, very conceptual,
very lucid regarding the context. Then they were “downloaded” to visual problems.
Rivas then invited them to propose a new system based on a geometric pattern, on
the figure of the equilateral triangle. “It’s incredible. None of them have stopped
working. They have made the decisions. They invented ways of approaching the
problem with very collaborative and creative work”, he commented.
In finalizing the process, the inside of the dome was turned into a celestial vault,
a cupula with the cosmos reflected. Paint, stickers, an entire landscape around
and at eye level of those who visit the montage, painted posters with questions
like “Are we prepared for the new technology?”, concepts such as “Creativity”
or “Empathy”, and drawings where it could be read, for example, in dripping
letters: “Carbon KILLS!”. These set up this universe with two or three dimensional
geometric figures made of PVC tubing, volumes of wire and cut up cardboard
hanging from the ceiling, landscapes drawn or painted on triangles. The access
to the dome was also intervened with an open geometry constructed with PVC.
The exercises pointed toward a comprehension and analysis of the surroundings,
where technology was the central theme and the “works” were the result of
exercises-questions and divergent thinking, indicated the artist: “The evolution
of he collective work was started based on critical questioning. The idea was to
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generate new thinking that would decant into non-conclusive, only open works or
actions, addressing at the same time questions of shapes, materials and colours”.

WORKSHOP 2. MAPS AND CONTEXT.
Derivas, Mapas y Recorridos (Drifts, Map and Routes), by Fernanda Mejía, was a
creative process that started with a tour through the entire urban sector where the
Ruins of Huanchaca are located in order to experiment with maps, documentation
of routes and signals, where the young people reflected on the city they see and
what they imagine for living. A strategy very characteristic of current art was key:
the observation of the territory.
The first day was a little confusing, said the Mexican artist. The young people asked,
rather puzzled, so we are going to make maps?” In order to open up their senses,
exercises were performed to relate their own bodies to the place, fist playing at
wandering through the esplanade with their eyes blindfolded, being confronted
with surprising obstacles.
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Later, the tour around the entire perimeter of the ruins was key, going up through
the empty lots, reaching a populated sector of buildings and continuing along the
promenade. This whole sector is marked by the enormous presence of the Cultural
Park, as well as the desert, the sea, the Enjoy casino and the urban expansion.
However, the first thing the Mexican artist discovered in her students was tiredness
and a conflict with the landscape, with how dry it is. â&#x20AC;&#x153;They want more greenâ&#x20AC;? she
affirmed.
So she asked them to work on photos of what attracted their attention. In
returning to the dome, they talked about what they had seen, immediately
detecting problem: the trash, the scarce vegetation, the excessive sun, the dry
space not very nice for walking, and the number of signs for properties, buildings
and automobiles for sale. Several in the group were immigrants or came from
other communes, with different experiences of place. The professor also invited
them to ask themselves if we always had to follow the same route in our transit
through the city, inviting them above all to be more aware of their surroundings.

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Then, each one drew their map, identifying places, situations and problems,
working with texts, post-its, cuttings and collages, drawings and paintings. They
tried to recognize, reflect on and work with what is manual and visual, with twodimensional figures or volumes, to represent a process where ideas should be
important and the professor barely guides but rather influences, or induces.
So, by opening up and discussing, little by little they were able to express the critical
opinion they have of society; the students were intervening in the dome, telling
stories, talking about trips, pointing out landmarks and places through maps, but
always with another type of “documents” and works, such as photos, news from
websites printed on paper, a tree constructed with wire and wastes (that was
situated as a sculptural object), and stencils that repeated symbols referring to the
city and the pollution, on papers to carry or on the walls, signs that also pointed
out the city the young people dreamed of with few automobiles, more cyclists,
more green areas and more art in the streets.
One of the interventions could be the epitome of this whole feeling: pointing out a
red button drawn on the wall as if it were ready to be pushed, with a text that said
“Button for changing the world… Nothing happened? Do it yourself!”.

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WORKSHOP 3. ENGRAVING AND TERRITORY.
Yvy: Taller Experimental de TĂŠcnica Adhesiva (Yvy: Experimental Adhesive
Technique Workshop), by Marcos BenĂ­tez, based on the Guarani word, Yvy, which
refers to the earth, related students with the place, collecting different types of
stones, sand and soil, materials that served to generate matrices and engravings.
Starting from the arid condition of the zone and the Pachamama culture of the
traditions of the high Andean plateau, the Paraguayan artist chose that material
for teaching them to work based on engraving with an adhesive technique, where
the matrix, which is imprinted, is formed by adding layers instead of removing
them. In some way, xylography and lithography were present, and in the process,
other graphic techniques.
From that intrinsic relationship with the place, he first invited them to recognize

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where they were, touring the Ruins of Huanchaca and extracting elements
such as stones and different types of soil. In the dome they were classified by
colours, thicknesses and textures, pictorially occupying them on abstract
designs, pasting them with agglomerated glue and varnishing. The students had
to make these matrices without thinking about contents, but rather the nature

of the earth and of the territory. Then, with or without dye, they were printed on
craft paper, resulting in engravings that were only texture (hollow engravings) or
informalist type images, groups of weaves, stains and telluric abstractions, where
the grain, the porosity, the track, and the ground were significant.
In the second exercise, free images arose that the artist then invited them to cut in
order to generate works based on the fragments. He thereby proposed a game of
views that went from the macro to the micro, describing in detail an artistic value.
The soils were also used as pigment, mixed with oil and water, in water colours, or
simply adhered directly to the surface for composing.
Among these materials from the place, there were also vegetable pigments that
the artist himself brought from his land. The use of these elements obtained other
senses of identity, history, and exchanges, with the workshop also approximating
cultural, social and political senses.
Thanks to a conjunction of fortunate events just then, Camila Díaz, one of the
artists who belong to the Group SE VENDE that work on production in SACO4,
obtained an engraving press that was used for the first time in the workshop.
The machine became an important element in the montage, where the works
in series were hung inside the dome, displayed over the enormous work table,
as if it were a collection of laboratory samples involving different types of soil,
working materials, tools and printed papers that gave account of the stages of the
workshop. Conceived as a process, in the end Benítez sought to make the language
exercise “more complex”; not make it so linear, including formalities of the trade
such as the use of the term “artist’s proof” and of course, the creation in series.
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WORKSHOP 4. VIDEO AND RECYCLING.
Breve Introducción al Video en el Arte (Brief Introduction to Video in Art) by Luis
Gómez, invited the exploration of the creative potential of technology from the
standpoint of recycling, at the same time driving the students to document what
they experienced in SACO.
For the first time, the Cuban artist faced a group of students in the middle of
adolescence. “Still in an age of playing, I thought precisely that it would be easier
to learn by playing than by imposing things. I brought a very specialized program
regarding video topics and their history. But upon arriving I realized that it was
impossible to address it without a background in art and also in contemporary art
in order to understand current discussions. So I decided that it would be best to
incentivize this idea of doing it yourself or recycling”, he explained.
He modified the focus, he says, based on the experience in the Universidad de las
Artes, in La Habana, where they created a new media laboratory, taking on the
“delayed” technology in Cuba, with edition in open source programs, with Arduino
and micro-controllers, welding the plate itself, using old television sets... So work
was done with the “recycling philosophy”.
For artists, in recycling there is a resignification of everyday tools: “They can be
converted into something else”. This occurred for example with the use of the
cellular phone, where its low quality image could also be used.
Gómez took into consideration the know-how that the young people already brought
regarding video since it was everyday technology for them, and tried to introduce
new elements based on what they already had on hand, offering them an easy to
handle edition set.
A first exercise, he clarifies, was a test to see who had possibilities with the media, or
how he would then organise them for working: Continuous video, where the student
must have an idea and plan it. “Once the camera is put on play, that idea runs until
it is stopped”, he explains. The professor thereby proved each one’s capacities to set
up a script, the photographic framing, the sense of time, notions of basic language.
Then he invited them precisely to “work an idea” with clips of scenes from movies
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that gave them a found footage on which to build a story based on the collage. The
exercise was a type of recycling, of basic editing and also of bringing them closer to
contemporary cinema.
The next operation was a documentary. For that they were divided into three groups
with each one guided by a “leader” and where there could be a scriptwriter, two
cameras and a sound engineer. The idea was to understand that video is not an
individual but rather a collective medium. The topic was what occurred at the place,
the sense of the art, the other workshops, SACO4, covering it with tours, different
takes and interviews with other students, tutors and artists-professors.

“It was in this work that some very funny documentaries were uncovered. They
demonstrated their personalities, the commentators, and those who tended more
toward organizing or directing became evident. The results have been amazing.
Those who seemed more uneasy were later more connected, very concentrated on
the computer”, he points out.

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WORKSHOP 5. PHOTOGRAPHY AND CITY.
The montage of La Carpa Mágica (The Magic Tent), directed by Roberto Huarcaya,
included photos and images that resulted from experimentation with stenopeic
boxes and a large dark camera that the professor built so the young people could
experience the basic photography process from inside. The workshop had two
objectives: give them the experience of constructing an image through technology
and experiencing the situation as a physical and chemical process, where they
sweat, if that were necessary, says the Peruvian artist, understanding that taking
a photo is not instantaneous and requires time. “The idea was to re-link them to
the doing”.
For that, stenopeic boxes were constructed from shoe boxes, or rather, a large dark

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camera was installed in the Ruins of Huanchaca at the edge of the beach and in
the Plaza de Armas, a cube covered with black plastic that gave the same effect as
a shoebox, except that here they could all enter to discover from inside how the
light passed through an opening and the image from outside was reflected in the
background upside down. There, a photo-sensitive paper captured in fragments
the projection that measured three by three metres, an exercise that Huarcaya
has already carried out with children 4 to 5 years old in Lima, and that comes from
the beginnings of the photographic principle with an instrument that arose in the
Renaissance and that was used by painters.
Moving the contraption to another place, the professor pointed at representing
the three scenarios or landscapes of Antofagasta: the natural, the marine, and one
that is architectonic and urban. What is unusual was how the magic tent returned
after a kind of urban intervention, where the young artists captured off and on the
intimate conversations of those who passed by or who, for example, dwelled for a
long while on the bench in the plaza, never imagining that they were being listened
to from inside. These fragments of stories were in turn mixed with the sounds of
automobile engines, the sermon of an Evangelical pastor, or the bells of a church.
Based on the confinement and darkness, points out Huarcaya, hearing becomes
more acute and the experience of city is nourished.
So, out of all these situations there came takes of Antofagasta, of the military
chapel, the sea, the ruins, people, and architectural structures, while more authorial
photos were elaborated from the small box, of flowers, houses and the profiles of
each of their faces. Successively, the work involved revelation, amplification and
drying processes. Finally, all the images serve as a free montage where the photo
gave cause for constructing their own fictions, based on the fantasy on the walls of
the domes, relating them with drawings, clippings, and graffiti, such as the image
of foliage, for example, that was completed with the tracing of a UFO landing, or of
an entire abstraction in black and while that inspired the figure of a fish.
“So they ended up creating with the idea that everything is fair, also assuming the
error, painting, pasting, with everything at hand, where the image is a record of
things that stimulates them or leaves them trapped”, he advised.
Another objective, the artist added, was “for them to lose the innocent view, naive
of the construction of the image. That is, remain clear that it is a construction,
precisely, where a number of decisions, including ideologies, are made, loading
them with levels of subjectivity. The image has to be read with certain suspicion
and not as if it were the absolute truth”.

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WORKSHOP 6. DRAWING AND EXPANSION.
The showing in the dome of the workshop Dibujo, Espacio Social y Campo
Expandido (Drawing, Social Space and Expanded Field), by Saidel Brito, included
creative processes based on drawing and expansive proposals that made it possible
to understand the work with graphics from other materials and places.
The Cuban-Ecuadorian artist started showing the young people a selection of
400 images of contemporary art, where drawing is both a technique in itself and
a concept that extends to sculpture, installation or toward proposals difficult
to classify. They were works by internationally renowned artists, for example,
sculptures by Rauschenberg, paintings by Basquiat, sketches of Christ on his
interventions or the corporal drawings of Oppenheim, adding Chileans such as
Claudio Bravo, Nury Gonzรกlez and Arturo Duclos.

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The conventions with which the students had arrived were related to design,
comics, and graffiti. The professor then looked for a way to make them play,
inviting them to a group effort that broke with the idea of intimist creation: he
gave them five minutes to think about a drawing in the outside space that they
would then have to describe in a text. Brito kept what they wrote. Then he asked
them to freely draw in twos. They pasted the drawings on the inside of the dome
and commented on what was different about them and what they had in common.
“The showing started to be assembled from the first day”, he adds. The exercise
finally involved returning each writing for a second colleague to draw it. He points
out that this proposed “an emerging collective awareness: gestate knowledge
based on collective experience and dialogue among everyone. The young people
started to get to know each other through those drawings. With that we set the
bases for the workshop”.
However, two young people with Asperger’s syndrome put the professor and
the order of the workshop to the test. “I was sure they would not be able to
integrate” he says. With the timely help of an educational psychologist, some basic
instructions and above all with the teacher’s empathy and intuition, plus the close
companionship experienced within the group, what seemed like an impediment at
the beginning was then transformed into an unsuspected potential. “Freedom is
understanding each one’s limits”, Saidel Brito said.
The work that involved a relationship with the surroundings continued. The
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students portrayed participants from the other workshops, from the speeches and
encounters, of professors and the public, invited friends who arrived, or worked
with expanded drawing, including graffiti, stencils, direct drawing on the wall,
photos of objects, the use of papers and elements found around the place. In
each station, the children with Asperger’s, Joaquín and Benjamín, concentrated,
respectively, on what they were doing: making a human figure on the table with
pieces of eraser or outside the tent with stones found in the place; or copying
fragments of others’ drawings on post-its, then pasting the small phosphorescent
papers over the originals, with more abstract versions. This element was
transversal in the montage and even gave it a sense, with everything ending up
as just one work.
The texts were also inserted into the montage. There was for example, a very
synthetic but precise drawing where at the edge of the flat roof of a building a
small seated man is seen and over him a globe with the symbol of peace; that is,
thinking or talking about that while looking down or perhaps into the distance,
sustaining the equilibrium. Along with that a dated paper: Antofagasta 24 August
2015, where it reads below: “Me from when I was young on the roof of my house,
aspiring how to be able to go out toward success, greatness, wisdom”.

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WORKSHOP 7. SCULPTURE AND IDENTITY.
In Nuestra Identidad Dinámica (Our Dynamic Identity), a proposal by Alejandro
Turell, the young people arrived little by little to a series of clay heads, self-portraits
that started playing at sculpting blindly. The small and fine sculptures that resulted
in a sort of “selfies” in clay, implied that they rethought themselves.
Already the first day the professor faced them with the exercise of moulding the
clay, with an amount that adapted very well to being worked in their hands, asking
each one to do a self-portrait, but with their eyes blindfolded. It was about working
based on “tactile memory, of understanding that perception is not limited to what
is visual, and addressing the constructs that determine our own identity”, stated
the Uruguayan artist.
When they took off the blindfolds, they were completely surprised at what they
saw. Then they were given instructions to refine details and sculpturally work on
their own faces. “There was a girl who, for example, had a hard time working on
her eyes. So we realized that maybe it was because she wore glasses. We added
them later… It is important to consider that the same thing doesn’t happen in
everyone. The objective was to give each one confidence”.
For that, he tells, the first thing really was to expose himself as the professor to a
similar exercise, so they would find him equally vulnerable.
“At the beginning we thought it was impossible to achieve the self-portraits. This
is a teaching format that enables opening up possibilities for new generations
to discover their potential, to unleash greater security at an age in which a lot
questioning arises. It involves recognizing the material and constantly talking about
the creative process, getting them to freely play, manifest themselves, and express
their opinion. It is fundamental to give them the opportunity to learn in a context
that is more stimulating for them. Sweep away preconceptions regarding teaching
methodology and practice and start from there. The other ways of learning are
more arduous”, he warns.
A reference, he says, is the workshop in the first year of Fine Arts in the East
Regional University Centre of the Universidad de la República, in Rocha. “It’s also a
trigger to talk about topics related to art”.
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The young people laughed when they discovered that they were basically working
on selfies made out of clay, he comments. “And why not? We think it was interesting
to build stories based on that”. The clay was an anachronic element, considering
especially that it involves a generation that has technology so integrated into
their daily life. “It’s an analogic tool that gave them the opportunity to surprise
themselves with what they could do with their hands without anything digital
interceding”.

In the process, a group dynamic was generated, where the professor did not
induce but rather only gave minimal instructions, working and sharing he adds
“making them understand that they never did anything wrong, that everything
was a gain and that art is losing the fear… When there was something they didn’t
resolve and they got frustrated, he helped them, intervening in the sculpture to
resolve things jointly. From uncertainty there arise different possibilities where
they decide”, he affirms.
Carolina Lara
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THE STUDENTS
DIEGO RIVEROS LÓPEZ (17 years old)
Instituto Comercial Alejandro Rivera Díaz, Copiapó
Workshop Drifts, Maps and Routes, by de Fernanda Mejía (Mexico)
Well, this experience really seemed fabulous to me, to get to know people who are
in different arts, get to know people who have the same thoughts as you do when
they see art, a nice way. Thank God I was in an excellent group; we all worked
well and always in a good way, getting to know good people who, let’s say, have
capacities for doing what is not expected very much.

Could you explain to us what the workshop consisted of?
The workshop of maps and routes is how you see yourself in daily life, the routine
of walking to a place like we all do, how to make that something entertaining and
didactic by changing your route, seeing how society can get away from always
doing the same, from the constant routine. That’s a little about the workshop I
was in.
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How do you think this can serve for your personal life and maybe if you have one,
in your personal artistic goal?
It is going to serve me a lot, because really that is my thinking, change the routine,
get out of the routine and make it entertaining, and inviting. There are people who
do very pretty things and the truth is that I was in just the right workshop, the
one I wanted, because it talked about getting out of the routine, so it was a good
workshop.
Had you ever been to a contemporary art workshop before?
No, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the first time, the first time.
EDUARD CABRERA TABILO (16 years old)
Francisco de Aguirre Public School, Calama
Workshop Our Dynamic Identity, by Alejandro Turell (Uruguay)
Tell us what you had to do in the workshop, what has happened, what you have
liked.
The workshop consisted of making a self-portrait of ourselves in clay, with our
eyes blindfolded. We thought about it with our eyes blindfolded. There were two
classes with our eyes blindfolded and then another, with finer traits that we had to
do without the blindfolds, and it has been very interesting and very dynamic. I was
motivated because I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know anything; I had never done it, and the professor

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told us that everything we do is fine, nothing is going to be bad, so I was motivated
and decided to participate more.
The faces in the clay portraits are very likeable, as if they have some identity. Tell
us a little about that.
Sure, at the beginning you do it, and as you continue working with the clay, the
professor helps you and the faces start to be familiar, and a good job by the
professor too.
Had you done any workshop like this? Does it relate in any way to what you want
to do in the future with an artistic scholarship?
No, I have never done (anything like this) in my life. I didn’t think I was going to do
it either, and actually I don’t plan to continue with this. Even though it was a nice
experience and all, I don’t plan to do something related to sculpture.
FELIPE CORTÉS JORQUERA (18 years old)
José Santos Ossa Public School, Vallenar
Workshop Brief Introduction to Video in Art, by Luis Gómez (Cuba)
I work in personal development, I do interviews, motivation. The workshop in
which I am participating is audio visual. I chose this workshop because I wanted
to know what characteristics were needed to make more professional videos,
because the ones I have made are not very professional. That is, even though I
have been evolving, I wanted to know what programs are needed in order to edit
like a professional.
From the art standpoint, beyond the qualities or possibilities that video has,
because video has many possibilities in life today; it is everywhere. So, from the
standpoint of expressive possibilities, what have you been able to learn? What
have you learned from what the professor has shared with you?
I think that what the professor has most instilled is that in order to do anything,
whether a video, or a project, it needs to be step by step, you need to be working
constantly, be looking at every detail. Because he said “don’t bite off more than
you can chew”, which is a saying, that if you try to do too many things you won’t do
them with quality. So the professor makes us understand that and the expression
of the video would be as detailed as possible with things, with the credits, with
everything that the video contains.
And with regard to how the work group has been, what do you think about
the group you and the other colleagues have been able to form? How has the
cohesion seemed to you, the group work?
Very good. The group work strengthens all the people’s capacities. Because when
we work individually we don’t have the connection with others, of having different
points of view, of forming a better quality project…
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Collective…
Collective, sure. We don’t have only one point of view, we have everyone’s opinion
and with that you achieve better work. Then that supports us. Also knowing how
to relate. Working in a group is vital for working in companies or for all of our
future.
And now that you know a little more after all these days, what have you
understood contemporary art to be from this? What does it consist of?
Of course, sure. With all the professors we have been learning from, the
conferences they have given us, I think there is a before and after in the life of all the
students and all of us who are here. Because they taught us how to reflect, think,
how to realize that art is not just making a work but also involves management,
dissemination, a creative process of years, the motivation and definition that art
doesn’t have, or rather, that art can be different for each person.

NICOLE GUTIÉRREZ RESTREPO (16 years old)
Technical Public School of Antofagasta
Yvy: Experimental Adhesive Technique Workshop, by Marcos Benítez (Paraguay)
In the workshop we have learned the different types of soil, the colours there are,
and to experiment with them in the matrices.
What things have you done?
Now we are doing this (showing a work) with the soils we have collected right
here, in the ruins, to play with the colour tones of the soil.
What do you think about this? Have you enjoyed it? Has it been a great
experience? Tell us a little about what you have felt.
Being in SACO4 is an awesome experience between we learn many different types
of things, of art and its things.
What country are you from?
I am from Colombia.
Tell us about this novelty of the workshop, because it is not just the workshop
but also the opportunity to participate in this Contemporary Art Week. Maybe
you hadn’t heard of this concept, of contemporary art. Tell us about all that.
I had not heard about this; I didn’t know it existed, until my technology teacher
included me in this so I could participate. But it seems like an awesome opportunity
for adolescents. I would even like everyone to be able to participate, but not
everyone can, because they select them.
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How was your professor?
The professor is great, very cool and very patient, because sometimes, for example,
I got confused doing my work because I put too much glue, too much stain, but he
is patient and explains to me how to do it.
And who are those who are with you here, the rest of your colleagues?
Some of my colleagues come from Taltal, or from other places; they are not just
from Antofagasta, they are also from other places and we have different ages,
from different courses, but as a group we get along well.

WILDO LĂ&#x201C;PEZ VILCA (17 years old)
Likan Antai C-30 Rural Public School, San Pedro de Atacama
Workshop Drawing, Social Space and Expanded Field, by Saidel Brito (Ecuador)
I am a Likan Antai descendent, from an ethnic group there, and in the workshop
we are drawing, projecting, getting to know how we are. The professor gave us the
freedom to express ourselves in the module and to exhibit what we want, with our
imagination and nothing else.
From what you have been able to see, what are the strengths of drawing
in contemporary art, what the professor says about extended or expanded
drawings?
One of their strengths is that human beings can express what they want in
drawings, either ugly or pretty. They express it as they want and I think that has
a big influence on history. Thanks to that we are who we are. We started with
drawing and then moved on to literature.
And how do you think the synergy within the group has been? Is there an energy
when you are drawing, when you are expressing yourselves? How does that
work?
We all share a passion for drawing and thanks to that fanaticism, that hobby, we
have gotten along well. There are guys who have other talents, other focuses or
who have other areas, to say it that way; they have different capacities in drawing.
They complement each other and between everyone a good fiato is achieved.
What are you doing now?
Now we are working individually, some in groups; me, individually.
And your colleagues who are there in the back, what are they doing?
They are doing a mosaic and a branch, a tree, and each student is going to express
what they want on that branch.
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Tell us about the professor.
The professor is tela, cool. He lets us be who we are; lets our talent flow so that we
are expressed in the module, so that we make ourselves known.
The 4th Contemporary Art Week is perhaps a rare concept, maybe some people
don’t understand it, but you, what have you been able to capture of that concept?
The truth is that I don’t understand it much, but it is making public what art is.
There are different types of art. And I believe there are still more arts. There aren’t
just seven, there could be more.
KEVIN CORTÉS FUENTES (18 years old)
La Chimba Scientific Humanist Public School, Antofagasta
Workshop The Magic Tent, by Roberto Huarcaya (Peru)
Our workshop is about photography, with Professor Roberto Huarcaya, and what
we have been doing these four days is inserting ourselves into a pinhole (stenopeic
camera) that on one end has an opening that is covered. Where we point, an image
is projected. For example, if I point over there and the professor is there, inside
there is a white screen with the opposite side and his image is projected. Later
when we have the projected image, everything self-sensitive, it comes out in the
negative. And during these four days we have been doing all types of revelations.
The other day we went to the beach where the military church is (Our Lady of
Carmen Military Chapel) and for example, you can see the cross of the church;
there is the Virgin. I don’t know what else I can say.
Could you comment more on the work?
Since the paper is inside, it is sensitive, it is exposed to the light.
How did you achieve it?
I am going to explain these two images here. Yesterday after lunch when we arrived
here, they had the brilliant idea of exposing the photosensitive paper, one in the
shade, another in the sun, and another between the sun and the shade, placing
objects, and here in this image, a glass was superimposed directly in the sun. In
more than five minutes, the glass was marked. I don’t know if you can see it well.
In this other one we have here, the guys placed stones; Joan put JP. It was exposed
for more or less time, but there is a difference in colours more than anything.
Tell us about what has caught your attention the most.
What has caught my attention the most is seeing the camera. What is outside,
when we insert ourselves into a camera, is the representation of a tent. Inserting
ourselves and being able to project the image and at the same time reveal it. It has
been a very attractive process, because I didn’t know it. Neither did I know that
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this type of cameras called pinhole or something like that existed, and it has very
much caught my attention because there are things about photography that I
didn’t know and there must be many more things that you can learn about the
process in the little time that is left. You don’t need a good cell phone or a bad
cell phone. With the apparatus you can make a good photo and it is going to be
expressed on its own, regardless of what we take it with. It could be with a GoPro,
with the same camera that you are using to record me. I think the photo is going
to be expressed on its own, and if it is good it will be noticed.

MACARENA GUTIÉRREZ RICHARD’S (17 years old)
La Chimba Scientific Humanist Public School, Antofagasta
Workshop Does humanity have a chance to finally and successfully survive on
planet Earth, and if so, how? by Tomás Rivas (Chile)
This project tries to bring together young people from different regions, from Arica
to Vallenar, where they have brought us to propose a project by different artists,
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where each group makes decisions. We can choose the purpose of our project.
Ours in particular is related to the criticism we young people have regarding what
is happening in our region and the problems that affect us, such as the pollution
from the shed here in Antofagasta, the destruction of the foliage, and address the
topics through art.
So, it’s like saying that through art, or with a mixture of various techniques, you
can show a little of this truth, this reality.
First we got together with the professor to talk about the subjects that interested
us and we started to set out things such as whether technology was in fact helping
us or destroying us, if people knew how to use technology, how they had to do it, or
whether we were not taking advantage of it and that was hurting us. Then, based
on all these inferences and hypotheses, we arrived at our project and started to ask
ourselves why we are not doing anything if this affects us. So our project tries to
attract people’s attention, not telling them what they have to do, or what they have
to leave clean, but rather call their attention and start to get the people themselves
to ask what can I do in order for this to change.
And what results do you hope to achieve? Because we have seen intense work
these past days, everyone participating side by side, doing different jobs as part
of a common project. What do you hope to be able to achieve the day of the
inauguration?
We are very nervous because we put a lot of enthusiasm into our project. And we
have a lot of things left to finish. We hope that on the day of the presentation, which
is Friday morning, we can fulfil our purpose and that the project makes people start
to question; that the message we want to send with this project actually works.
I am going to ask you what contemporary art means to you.
I see contemporary art as we the young people being the future, so it’s like art
teaches us how to express ourselves, how we are, and now to start projecting
ourselves and creating a world that seems better to us and continue improving it
more and more.
Have you participated in an activity like this before?
Actually no. I have never had the chance to participate in an activity like this. It
seemed fun to me, and also the fact that we got together with other students who
are not from here, and we shared with each other. We have other artists who teach
us, and on our part, we not only came to work but also to learn values such as
empathy, putting yourself in someone else’s place. So we came not only to do this
but also to be educated personally as well as artistically.

95

96

THE PROFESSORS
ALEJANDRO TURELL (Uruguay), Workshop Our Dynamic Identity:
“(Artistic education) is providing tools to students so they have the opportunity
to get to know themselves”
Alejandro Turell (Montevideo, 1975) has a Bachelor’s Degree in Art – Plastic and
Visual Art (2006) from the Instituto Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, Universidad
de la República (UDELAR), Montevideo. In 2012, he entered as a candidate for a
Master’s in Anthropology from the Cuenca del Plata Faculty of Humanities and
Education Sciences of the UDELAR. Currently, he is professor of Drawing and
Design Communication in the Multidisciplinary School of Dramatic Art (EMAD
in Spanish) and adjunct professor of G3 Free Educational Aesthetics Orientation
Workshop in the Associate Degree of Arts – Plastic and Visual Arts, East Regional
University Centre (CURE). Since 1997 he has participated in several collective
exhibitions, reaching countries such as Argentina, Germany, the United States
and Poland. In Montevideo, he has held the following individual exhibitions:
Trofós, Dodecá Cultural Centre, (2005); C14, Montevideo Town Hall (2006); Rerum
Thesauri, French Alliance (2007); D.E.N.C. project, Department of the Natural State
of Culture (2008); Anecúmene, National Visual Arts Museum (2011); in addition
to Obra Gráfica, Vasseur Institute, Santa Lucía (2001); and Naturellart Frankfurt,
in Villa Mothesius, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2008). Artist-professor invited
by the Latin American Centre, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), U.S.A
(2005). His work included the Uruguayan submission to the II Biennial Mediations,
Poznan, Poland (2010). Curator of the submission from the EMAD to the Student
Section PQ11, Quadrennial of Prague (2011). Artist invited to Manifesta 9, Belgium,
and to the Museé de la Ville, Macedonia (2012), as well as The history of graphics
in Uruguay, Mérida, and VALOARTE, Costa Rica (2014).
http://www.naturellart.blogspot.com/
Alejandro, could you explain to us what the workshop you held in SACO was
about?
The workshop is a proposal and arises based on the conceptual framework of the
mould and the shape. It is a workshop of initiation to the perception of visual arts
and consisted of a work premise from the first period of fine arts. And what we
tried to accomplish was to link the students based on sensations caused by volume
and not by sight. The proposal was to generate a self-portrait of the student in
which they had to work a good part of the process with their eyes blindfolded.
What do you teach when you teach art?
One of the first concerns I have as a teacher is precisely what I teach when I teach
art. It is a question that we all must ask and I deeply believe in providing students
with the tools for them to be able to get to know themselves, their environment,
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to free them from any preconception and to point toward a sensitive experience
with the subject, its production, and with whatever that person wants his or her
legacy to be at this time.
How do you feel that the education system in your country instils an interest in
the arts? Is it that way or not?
Once a process is experienced that has changed in recent years, everything that
has to do with design, artistic teaching has been incorporated into the second
level. This makes studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sensitization for art grow at a much earlier age than
in the past. The cultural policies that have been implemented have produced
an interesting development in the subject, and through the art faculties it is
represented in the different artistic disciplines. Uruguayans have been much
sensitised regarding culture.
Can anyone be an artist? What do the academy and the title mean?
I believe that anyone, any human being is creative. It is a potential that is also
interesting to think about. I believe the conflict is in what art is. The most valid
question is whether we can all develop it. Society provides us with the possibility
to develop ourselves as persons and it turns out to be anecdotal whether a person
becomes an artist, if he or she already has those creative tools. The phrase that
â&#x20AC;&#x153;every human being is an artistâ&#x20AC;?, is little bit designed for effect and it seems to me
that all human beings have potential that we must develop.
What significance have your professors had in your artistic education?
For me, the people who helped me learn and to whom I must be grateful for being
able to learn, for what I am, have been very important and I hold them very fondly
in my memories. I am grateful for their generosity, for the potential they awoke in
me and my teaching. And that way of being generous with what I give and how I
give it, I owe to them.
What do you think should be the perfect model of training, of artistic education?
It seems to me that models are applied that can sometimes turn out to homogenize
the career and what is artistic. I think that what is best is the potential for a student
to have different teachers and I believe that not all professors may be the best for
a student. I think it is more important for a student to tell the professor to be his
or her maestro.
The last is about the workshop you are holding; how would you evaluate the
experience here and the contact with the young people? Yesterday we were
witnesses in the open forum in the auditorium, when you brought the young
people out. We saw you get emotional at one point and it was very nice. How do
you summarize the experience up until now in SACO?
Yesterday I was very moved by the students, because just one day after having
made contact, and them being so young, they had the courage to clearly state
their opinions, with my support, and knowing that I was there for them for
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whatever they needed, and at the same time the fearlessness of youth was moving
for me. I think we can really give future generations tools for them to rise up as
spokespersons for the next generations.
What do you expect from now until Friday, with the inauguration of the exhibition
in SACO and what the young people will be doing?
I expect much joy, much happiness, a sensation of pride and of having seen them
generating the best they could. The device that we use is not used up in the final
result and the students take away the best part of the whole workshop, and that is
the most important capital there is.

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FERNANDA MEJÍA (Mexico), Workshop Drifts, Maps and Routes:
“One of the problems is that the subject of visual arts is seen as more of a craft
and not as a thinking process”
Fernanda Mejía (Bogotá, 1972) studied Plastic Arts in the Academia Superior
de Artes of Bogota (ASAB), Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. She
took specialized courses in Virtual Learning Environments in Virtual Educa, in an
arrangement with the Higher University Studies Centre of the Organization of
American States (OAS). In 2007, she and Miguel Rodríguez Sepúlveda founded the
Buró Multinational Workshop of Contemporary Art Projects in Mexico City, where
she has been the coordinator of Viernes Social and Círculo del Ocio (instances
for dialogue and the exchange of ideas among artists and art professional), and
in charge of the Virtual Classroom since 2011. In 2012, she founded Círculo A,
a web platform for the dissemination of contemporary visual arts, where she is
contents coordinator. As an artist, she has four individual exhibitions: Yo sí estuve
en México, Mexican North American Institute of Culture, Monterrey (2005), and
in the French Alliance of Oaxaca (2004); Exhibición, Gilberto Alzate Avendaño
Foundation, Bogotá (1999); and Instantáneas, ASAB Exhibitions Hall, Bogotá
(1998). Highlighted among the collective exhibitions are: Emergía project, in
collaboration with Miguel Rodríguez Sepúlveda, exhibited in seven Latin American
countries between 2007 and 2012; México 70, Casa del Lago, Mexico D.F. (2005);
Preferiría no hacerlo, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico D.F. (2001); and El salón regional
de artistas de Bogotá, Colombia (2001). In 2003 she received the ENTEL III Award
Salón Internacional de Arte SIART - Bolivia 2003, Vice Ministry of Culture, National
Art Museum, La Paz.
www.tallermultinacional.org
http://www.circuloa.com/
What does the workshop you are doing consist of?
The workshop is about maps, drifts, and routes, so the purpose is to reflect on the
environment they are living in, starting with the daily route. We did a tour of the
area since most of the young people don’t live in Antofagasta. So in some way this
is not an everyday context. We did a tour behind the ruins and above the ruins. We
went behind, where the buildings are being constructed over by the promenade.
Then the exercise has been to identify, based on a very simple question, what
catches your attention about this whole tour? They have been identifying the
problems they see, that there is little vegetation, there is a lot of trash, that the
urban space is not very pleasant for pedestrians, there are shadows, animals in
the streets uncared for, that do not have owners, the climate. That type of things
affected them. Then it has been a process of becoming aware based on that tour
that there are problems they can identity based on where they live. Now we are
taking photographic information that illustrates the purpose of the workshop.
They are portraying things, more than thinking about a final product.
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What do you teach when you teach art?
Well, that’s a difficult question. What we (Taller Multinacional) and I do in the
workshop is directed at people who have already decided on art as a profession. So
what we offer are things that are more delimited, or that have to do with certain
voids we see in professional education in the city. In the courses on line there are
students from all over Latin America. So there are many things related to cultural
management, curatorship, museography and other art theory topics, but that are
focused on personal research. There are many topics related to anthropology and
arts, or psychology and arts that contribute to this research, but we are not really
dedicated to teaching children or young people, such as a process of introduction
to the arts or approach to the arts. We are also interested, among the offering
we have, in courses on teaching and arts, and there is precisely one that is about
educative museography, which has to do with how we bring those contents in the
museum closer to the public.
How do you see that the State instils an interest in the arts?
There is the curriculum, such as the subject of art, but that depends a lot on what
type of school it is. It could be said there is a crisis in public education. I think
the same is happening here and in many other countries, the topic of teacher
evaluation and the teachers that are trained to teach their subjects. Because it
is not just a problem with the arts, of the way they are taught, but also of other
subjects. So I think that one of the most important problems is that sometimes the
subject of visual arts is seen as more of a craft, like recreation, and not as a thinking
process that helps in bringing you closer to the world and to questioning what is
there, realizing what is happening. So it is a big question, not just for the arts. It is
also for other subjects. Suddenly you don’t have philosophy because education is
thought of for you to be a technician, a worker. It’s just about labour.
Anyone can be an artist? Does that make sense?
As human beings we all have creative capacities. That is undoubtable. Now, art
is a construction, a human designation, and the art world has some rules. So I
think not. A distinction has to be made with the creative activity you can have in
the world. That is something we can all experience or we can resolve immediate
things in daily life, the way in which we relate to each other. Artistic activity as a
professional field is something else. They are two different things. There is: we can
all be doctors, or we can all be historians, or we can all be in the military. That has
to do with another type of decisions that can even have to do with productivity,
what is going to be your livelihood, or how are you going to live your life in the
world. We can all be what we want, but let’s say that also has its peculiarities.
What type of relationship do you have with your teachers?
I am quite dishonest with my teachers, well with some in particular or who I
would thank in particular. I think my interest in studying art at that time was to
express myself. But you find that with art you can say things directly, I think it’s like
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something therapeutic. There were many teachers, even the teachers that you
don’t respect very much and that make you waste your time influence you. So you
can question many things that are close, like how you want to access knowledge.
So, yes, they obviously have an influence, they are there. But I think you have to be
responsible for your own knowledge process and your own sense of learning. So I
don’t know which your teachers would be. It could be one I never met; it could be
Marcel Duchamp.
What would be your perfect model of artistic education?
The truth is that I don’t have that perfect education model. One thing we have
detected is that being art teachers is an empirical experience. As you go about
doing it, without formal training in teaching, there are a lot of teaching models.
Many times we see alternative education projects. It’s almost like discovering
warm water. There are a lot of teachers thinking about education problems or
about the learning process for children, young people and adults. How experiences
make knowledge difficult, what those previous experiences are like, how they are
formed, how we make knowledge significantand for learning to be significant. So
I think that a perfect model would be a commitment by the people dedicated to
teaching and do a little more research regarding the abilities for teaching things
that have already been invented.
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How has your experience in SACO4 been?
Well, I am surprised by the landscape. It is my first experience in the desert.
Well, desert in a city where everything is built. So it is something else. But while
subjectively the fact of being in the desert is something that impresses me very
much, it is quite pleasant. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know; the children do what they want, there is a
longing for vegetation. That attracted my attention. It has also been very pleasant
to meet with colleagues, with the other artists, exchange opinions, ideas, see what
others are doing, and tell them what you are doing. These encounters are always
very fruitful; they are very nutritive to use a word, such as meeting with others and
seeing what they are doing.

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Luis Gómez (Cuba), Workshop Brief Introduction to Video en Art:
“Anyone can be an artist based on an approach toward creativity and enjoying
what you are doing”
Luis Gómez (La Habana, 1968) graduated in 1991 from the Instituto Superior de
Arte of La Habana (ISA). He is currently head of the New Media Laboratory Course
in the same institution. His works have been exhibited in the National Fine Arts
Museum of La Habana, in the 49th and 56th Esposizione Internazionale D´Arte of
the Biennial of Venice (2001 and 2015); in the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art,
New York; in the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany; in
the Barbican Centre, London; in Art Basel and Maastricht, in the branches of the
FRI (Foreign Relations Institute of Germany); and in the Biennial of La Habana
organized by the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Centre. He has participated
in various residencies for artists granted by institutions such as The Mattress
Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Universidad Europea de Madrid; Arizona State
University; and Ohio State University, Ohio. His work forms part of collections such
as Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany; the Arizona State University Art Museum;
the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Centre, Cincinnati, Ohio; Galería Ninart (currently
Nina Menocal), Mexico City; National Fine Arts Museum of La Habana; the Van
Reekum Museum Apeldoorn, Holland; and the Wakita Museum of Art, Japan.
He has curated and collaborated in exhibitions in La Habana, such as Update &
Download, Casa de México (2004); La Palabra que Falta, Galería Havana Club,
Museo de Ron, Collateral to the XIX Biennial of La Habana (2006); Arth-Goth,
Galería La Casona (2007); Data, Galería Servando (2009); and Open Score, XXI
Biennial of La Habana, 2011.
http://obraluisgomez.blogspot.com/
As I was telling you, our intention (in the Instituto Superior de Arte de La Habana)
is to try to focus more on creativity than on traditional education in the arts, which
is based on following a pattern that is already made, or following the example
of some specific maestro, for example, you find a student who paints or who
tends toward Dalí and you show him a figure by Dalí, and he follows it, follows
the white rabbit, continues to develop from there. I think this vetos the expressive
possibilities of each place and what it does is install a standard medium of what art
can be. For us it is more important to lay out a challenge, raise a question and they
find their response. Of course this type of education is very flawed, but I believe
in the end it has worked, because even when they find coincidences in the future
of what was already done, they arrived at that result by their own effort, by their
own decision and their own research, and not already coded, compacted by extra
information. Also what happens, I believe, is the concept of “art” would somehow
have to change, because for many years, for a long time, it has been a concept of a
core of power. First, there were the first world countries and now the men that have
certain economic power, who decide what is art and what is not. I believe it is a very
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European concept, very particular to an area that has been “universalized”.
I believe that creative production, which is what we should somehow call it,
everything we see today, is broader and can have other uses, other meanings and
other intentions.
How would you evaluate the educational system in your country? Does it instil
interest for the arts or not?
In my educational system yes, or supposedly it does. The Cuban educational system
does instil an approach to the arts; what happens is that the approach is, of course,
twenty years behind regarding what we understand as art today. They understand
something else as art. They understand art as something that no longer interests
contemporary artists as art. So the figures or examples that they propose for us
are very backward and that popular encounter with art, or that encounter with
the arts prior to art schools lacks what is new. Sure it is a dream of artists as such,
that everyone understands it, that everyone approaches art. I believe that art, or
what we call art, is such a bourgeois concept that a certain quality of life is first
needed in order to approach it and sometimes in our countries we don’t have that
quality of life, or the philosophy of life is a philosophy of work, money, and endless
consumption and that quality is not invested in anything not of the same cycle.
What sense or importance do the academy and the title have? Do you agree with
the statement that anyone can be an artist?
That is a very ambiguous question because in theory anyone can be an artist based
on an approach toward their creativity and enjoying what they are doing. What
happens is that the requirement for what we call art is something else. What we
think or want it to be is one thing, and what this social group called intellectual
decides and calls on to define as art is something else, and it is defined in such a
way that not anyone can be an artist. You have to have a genius defined by some of
them, you have to have a background, there must be many details, titles, degrees,
etc.
And in your education, how important have your teachers been, whether in the
university stage or much earlier, in workshops, in schools?
What I can tell you is that my teachers have been so important to me that I
intended or said that I wasn’t interested in teaching and for being grateful I went
into teaching and it trapped me in a spectacular way. I believe that what I am today
is thanks to those teachers. I come from a barrio that before the revolution was
a very poor barrio, and taking account of my life, it could have been completely
different, diametrically opposed to what it is today. So I think that in my gratefulness
for that, I started giving classes and fell in love. I have been doing this for ten years.
What is your perfect model of artistic education? Does it exist? Do you have one?
What would it be?
I believe it is like art: if you create a model, it is no longer perfect; it is now
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something that will be repeated. We had a program in the ISA that started as a very
creative, very good program. Once it started to be repeated, it lost all its grace, all
the charm, and was the program that the student most rejected years later. So I
believe it is best not to create models; it is best what we are doing here, which is
exchanging those possibilities that we have as educators or those proposals we
have as educators, and is a way of enriching. Because I could tell you that my
model is spectacular; but Fernandaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s model helps a lot, and so does Huarcayaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.
And I believe that what is ideal would be the conjunction of all that, but that is
humanly impossible.
This week maybe is different for you, because you give classes at the university
in Cuba and are now giving them to children. How do you assess this experience
and how has the encounter been with the students you have had?
The truth is that I expected something else. Due to their age I expected children
who were more immature, less focused, and I have found a spectacular group. It
is a group that helps each other a lot, which seems important to me. And they are
also very focused on what they want. There will always be one or the other who is
more fun, but the response I have had from them is very impressive to me, really
very encouraging.

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What do you expect as a finished work on Friday? How is the process progressing?
What do you expect from that?
We are not expecting anything clear. We have the exercises and we are going to
show all of them. For example, yesterday we did an edition with stills with found
footage that turned out spectacular. We made three because they are groups of
four. We have three computers and they had a lot of fun using the silent film and
it turned out spectacular. And today we are doing a group of interviews that we
are going to edit tomorrow. I hope the result is the same and we want to show
them all, from the found footage, the first exercise, which is the continuous video,
through this interview.
Maybe you couldn’t see all the things you would have liked, it’s quite complex.
Ideally, I did a forecast and brought things that are very theoretical and very much
of the art in order to explain video art and then I realized that no, it didn’t work
that way and wasn’t important. What was important was to play, create and use
that mobile apparatus that they have and give it other uses that are maybe a little
more creative.
Talk to me about the value of the exercises, more than of the apparatus.
What I was telling you was that I had brought very technical things in the art, and
in the end I decided that it would be much more creative, much more of a game if
they could use that apparatus that they have with them, that they have practically
been born with, use it in a little more creative way, the cell phone as a camera and
as a specific addition as something that they can use later.

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MARCOS BENÍTEZ (Paraguay), Yvy: Experimental Adhesive Technique Workshop:
“It is important to keep in mind that everyone, students and teachers, learn from
everyone”
Marcos Benítez (Asuncion, 1973) was educated in institutions in Asuncion, such as
the Instituto para el Desarrollo Armónico de la Personalidad (IDAP, currently ISA
or Instituto Superior de Arte), the Instituto Cultural Paraguayo Alemán (ICPA), and
the Centro de Estudios Brasileros (CEB), among others, taking Visual Arts courses
with Olga Blinder, Engraving with Livio Abramo and Edith Jiménez, Art History
with Dorothee Willert, a Workshop in Cinema and Video Realization with Juan
Carlos Crematta, and one in Multimedia and Art with Mickey Wella, in addition to
workshops with foreign artists such as Luis Felipe Noé, Nuno Ramos, José Resende,
Joao Rossi and Oscar Manesi. He also took Communication Sciences courses at
the Universidad Católica and participated in the seminars on Identities in Transit
and Cultural Critique with Ticio Escobar. He is currently a member of the Carlos
Colombino Lailla Foundation (registered name of the Museo del Barro Visual Arts
Centre), and directs the Cabichui Engraving Workshop. He has participated in
collective showings in Paraguay as well as on an international level. Highlighted
among his latest individual exhibitions are, in Asuncion: Impenetrables, Visual
Arts Centre, Museo del Barro (2014); Mutaciones, Migliorisi Foundation (2008);
Proyecto Prana, Citibank Cultural Centre (2006); Proyecto Aregua / Mutaciones 1,
CitiBank Cultural Centre (2005); Taller de Grabado, Visual Arts Centre, Museo del
Barro (2002); Circuito Interrumpido, Cencar Cultural Centre (2003); Entre / vista
Nº 3 Scappini - La Marca, Hacer y deshacer la vida cotidiana (1999). In 2015, he
participated in the 10th Biennial of Mercosur, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
www.portalguarani.com/41_marcos_benitez.html
www.museodelbarro.org
What do you teach when you teach art?
Wow! What do I teach when I teach art? It’s very broad… Well, I have to think
about what I teach when I teach art. Really, my first objective is that it depends on
each group. In this case, a group of adolescents, and the first thing that leads me,
that stimulates me, is that they connect with each other, that they enjoy what they
do and that they connect with their soul, in this case. But I like to work with the
majority of people of this age, let’s say.
Okay, to relax the interview a little, could you tell us what you are doing in the
workshop?
My workshop is called “Yvy” which means “land” in Guarani. I come from a
bilingual country, where there are two official languages: Guarani and Spanish,
and I decided to give the workshop this name because we are in an area
where the land has no water, since this is the driest area in the world and I
liked to work with the land. So we are working on something experimental,
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seeing the textures, the colours. We are going to work with natural pigments
extracted from the land and form adhesive layers. It is a workshop on adhesive
techniques, an experimental workshop; that is what we are doing in my dome.
How would you assess the role that the school educational system plays in your
country? Does it instil in interest in the arts?
My country is a country that had 35 years of dictatorship, where it was prohibited
to think, where it was prohibited to express an opinion and live or think differently.
So that is very rooted in our culture and is still in school programs, but is gradually
leaving. And there is a difference for those who have a public education that
depends on the Ministry of Education and the government; unfortunately, they
have less access to the area of creativity due to a lack of preparation of teachers,
lack of budgets for materials and access to the children or students. On the
contrary, private schools have more access at this time. Moreover, parents are
under pressure due to the high costs they pay for these studies, where there are
workshops of art, expression, yoga, relaxation, of everything you want. They even
have a nutritionist. But there is that big gap between private and public.
Anyone can be an artist? Do you agree with that phrase? Does the academy have
any sense? What role does it play?
In my country, specifically, emerging artists at this time come from a fine arts
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school, they come from workshops. One that is currently emerging the most is
a doctor, with a high level position in public medicine, who is developing a very
interesting work, and took art and art theory workshops. There is education in
schools, and in the Instituto Superior de Artes and Bellas Artes, which are the two
that exist. But the most representative artists did not come out of those schools,
which is relative for me.
How important were your teachers that taught you your trade, the university, or
the informal workshops in your professional development?
I come from those artists who were not educated in the schools of fine arts,
because in the first place there weren’t any. As I said before, they closed all the
humanist courses of study, so obviously I didn’t take arts or fine arts. So I studied
communication sciences. In parallel I took workshops with artists and they were
key for me, they were my inspiring teachers, my formative teachers and that is
what has helped me find a real path. I feel privileged to be part of those workshops.
Many of them are no longer there, and the new generation of artists or students
don’t have them anymore, but they were very important.
In synthesis, what would be your perfect model for artistic education? Can you
think of one?
In one of the seminars in which I participate, which is directed by Ticio Escobar,
we use the theory of the ignorant teacher a little. I believe that is important, apart
from having academic support, the curriculum, the grade point average and all
that, also keeping in mind that we all learn from everyone. That gap between
students and teachers, from the top down, that vertical question, as something
more horizontal, in which we can all contribute something; I bet a little on that.
And regarding your experience here in the 4th Contemporary Art Week, the
encounter with your students, experiences in this workshop, how would you
assess it?
The truth is that I was very pleasantly surprised, above all yesterday when we had
the encounter with all the students, with very interesting, very bold questions. You
could see that these young people who came to participate were very stimulated.
But there was also a small degree of disconformity with some of them. For
example, one in particular said to me: “Ah, I thought we were going to do drawing”,
and I had to explain what the workshop was about, so I told him that we could
draw, but that this is not a drawing workshop. So he was somewhat disappointed,
since he had come and it wasn’t what he had thought, but that is 1%. In general
they were super enthused.

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ROBERTO HUARCAYA (Peru), Photography Workshop The Magic Tent:
“If they are not capable of taking extreme risks when they are being formed, the
less they will do so when they are performing professionally”
Roberto Huarcaya (Lima, 1959) studied Psychology at the Universidad Católica
del Peru, Cinema and Photography at the Universidad de Lima (1990-1993), at
the Instituto Gaudí (Lima, 1993-1997) and at the Centro de la Fotografía, now the
Centro de la Imagen (Lima, since 1999) of which he is founder and director. Artistic
director of Limaphoto (2010 - 2015) and co-director of the Photography Biennial
of Lima in 2012 and 2014. His work forms part of the Maison Européenne de la
Photographie in Paris, the Fine Arts Museum of Houston, the MOLAA Museum
of Latin American Art of California, the CoCA Centre on Contemporary Art of
Seattle, Lehigh University Art Collection, Museo de Arte de Lima, the Museo
de San Marcos in Lima, the Fundación América in Santiago, Chile, the Centro
de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam of La Habana and the Museo de Arte de
Lima, among other institutions and private collections. He has participated as a
conference speaker and guest portfolio reviewer in PhotoEspaña 2009, in Mexico
City; Latin American Photography Forum of Sao Paulo in 2007, 2010 and 2013;
Open Photograph Encounters of Buenos Aires 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008;
Andaluz Photography Centre in Almería (2008); Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la
Photographie d’Arles, in 2005, 2006 and 2007; Foto América Chile 2006; FotoFest
2002; and 10 Jornadas de Fotografía 2014, Montevideo, among other.
http://www.centrodelaimagen.edu.pe
http://www.robertohuarcaya.com
What does the workshop you have been realizing this week here in SACO4
consist of?
The workshop here in Antofagasta has tried to involve these young people 16 to
17 years of age in the experience of seeing how the image is constructed through
a physical process, and detach them from that digital automatism that they all
have in their small cell phones for taking more and more photos. In other words,
of going back in time in little in terms of ontogenic identity of the image and seeing
how it naturally surges in almost any space. And through this device, which is a
pinhole tent, a stenopeic tent, put them inside of it as if they were getting inside
of a photographic camera, and they have kind of a magical experience. From there
they return to a somewhat contemporary technology and approach it differently
after having gone through that experience. And along with that, a factor that
seems determinant to me in general terms, regarding creation, that they start to
see the concepts of time involved in these processes, that the processes require
time and that the immediacy of digital is not necessarily the best accompanist in
creative processes.

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We interviewed a boy who was really very enthused and indicated more or less
the same as you just said. I believe they understood it. What do you teach when
you teach art?
Regardless of the tool, the technologies, the different formats and all these
historical layers that have been “evolving” in terms of technology, where I like to
teach the full span, not just one of them, probably the most important has to
do with trying to give the young people some coordinates in terms, first, of the
idea that the process requires time, that it requires research, that they learn to
generate research projects and then include them in their creative and formal
processes. That they learn that this has to be handled under some parameters
of honesty and authenticity because otherwise it could end up emerging in the
pieces, in the works. And above all, probably, that they take risks, that they learn
to take extreme risks. Simply, and even more so in the education period, if they
are not capable of taking extreme risks when they are being formed, the less they
will do so when they are performing professionally. And finally, what things they
have to say, or what are their interests. If they don’t have content and don’t have
anything to say, even though they may have marvellous technical handling, the
contents are not going to take them very far. So it is this type of joint support of all
these ideas, concepts or intentions.
Take risks and propose topics that are more of an existentialist style, in the sense
that they are weightier.
Weighty or what their position is regarding the world, what things they have to
contribute to us and what are their fears, their desires, their wanting to fight; in
other words, having a critical position and something to contribute and say.
From that point of view, how do you assess the Peruvian educational system in
the task of instilling this interest in art with that aspect that is also critical?
I believe that the Peruvian system at this time, in general terms, above all based
on myself or talking a little about the state education system, is almost the antisystem in terms of what I propose, since it is still basically a rote system in terms
of information and collection of data and contents. In that sense, more than a
structure that develops thought and position, with very little reading also, which
is one of the big problems we have when the students come to school, the little
capacity they have for analysing and generating synthesis regarding readings
that are a little more complex; I believe that is a huge problem. I believe that
in the last two years there have been attempts to improve and change this, but
they are still in progress. And suddenly something is happening in the country
that will make a huge difference; I suppose that in other regional situations this
must be being partially or totally duplicated; that there is a very big difference
between private and state school education. There is huge development in
private schools, while state schools are running in slow motion. And when I say
private, I am not referring only to middle class or upper middle class schools,
but also to a very curious and interesting proliferation in the popular sector
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that by their own initiative and self-managed, generate proposals in parallel to
state education, but with a level of academic solidity that is much clearer.
Anyone can be an artist? What significance, what sense do academics and the
title have?
I don’t believe that artists in general, or people who try to communicate something,
whether in written or verbal terms, song, formal, sculpture, installation or visual
and video, photos, want to; but rather that we practically can’t do anything else.
So it’s almost not a question of wanting to but rather the near impossibility of
doing anything else. If you actually decide to do this as an option among a lot
of things and it makes no difference to you whether you do this or the other, I
don’t think you will last very long. Finally, these are life options, they are positions
with respect to things and I don’t think it’s about whether you want to or not, but
rather it’s about a type of link that is much more basic and that becomes almost
a need. It doesn’t have to be converted. It is a need to be translating in some
platform, through some media, what we have inside in order to express it and
communicate it outside. So in that sense, if someone asks am I going to be or not
going to be, and doesn’t have that, at a certain time, almost as a life option, I see
it difficult for something to grow there. Probably ten years later, different social
or maturation processes may be detonated in that same person, but I think at
that time when they occur, they are clear and there is no discussion or problems.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that later the person wont’ have the qualities to
adequately translate and communicate this in a clean, direct, honest and potent
form. But many of these things are also learned; we must also learn what platform
to use, and through which media we are going to direct ourselves. I am a disaster
at painting; I couldn’t have done it even for two steps. Obviously, we also need to
have a certain awareness of our comparative advantages and our limits.
Have your teachers been important in your education?
There are some people who have made me think and others who have stimulated
me to throw myself into what I do. I was educated first in children’s psychotherapy.
I worked with children and families in a private clinic. I was interested in film, I did a
couple of shorts, but I was involved in my profession, what I studied for. Until I got
into a photography workshop with a friend, Eduardo González, who unfortunately
is no longer living. I was injected with a passion for fixed image photography. Like
fireworks that were bursting in my head, they opened up a universe for me and the
fixed image I had never had, that was so strong and so potent that a month later I
was closing my office and resigning from my job in a private clinic, and two months
later I was looking for where to study photography, detonating with such force that
it turned around my life when I was 30, my life option, what I wanted to do with my
life. In that sense, I feel more influenced by some people from curiously different
backgrounds, some filmmakers, more than photographers, some theorists, more
than by the photographer’s development, due to the Iink with creation in the
broader sense of the spectrum.
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Do you have any reference for what artistic education should be?
No, I have no idea. But for me, the closest is somehow what we gradually try to
do in the school. Without becoming heavy, more than many times due to specific
contents and for generating a sequence of growing in knowledge I think that
somehow it should end in parallel; it seems more interesting to us to have the
vision, the link, the experience, and the relationship with people who are doing
important things, making that production visible. So, regardless of the medium
in which you are working and your political position in general, this selection of
authors is more than specific contents; it is a line that generates a very particular
link and is better quality.
Finally, what do you think about the encounter with the young people here in
SACO? How might you assess this week?
The group seems interesting to me, dissimilar, not because of their interest but for
their own personalities. It is a little difficult to analyse after such little time, but in
general what I have liked is everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s commitment, of getting involved a little in
the process, putting themselves in the position of getting out of the daily rat race
and moving to another period, another time, another pace, and try to live that
experience and conceive an image of the visual representation as an element, a
construct where a series of elements is taken before, and then in doing, it fits, it is
composed, it is chosen. All this is confirmed. It is not casual, it is not objective, but
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rather all this load, this weight of the selection if not brought closer to that view,
there is an innocence that in that historical time is almost shameful. I think that
for me there is an imbalance of time; what I brought prepared perhaps needed
another day, and it starts a little bit from the device of the tent. It has taken more
time than I thought to set it up, go to the sites and return. Those times stolen from
the workshop in terms of moving and setting up, have taken away space to see
other things that have to do not only with making the image but with the content
of that image, which is what I want to finish doing now, moving the assembly. I
have asked them to bring magazines, newspapers and a series of things where we
are going to finish constructing a kind of recreation of images of Antofagasta, their
personally based view, and there make the connection regarding the subjectivity
of the image that we are talking about, and that they lose that when they accept
any image as true and valid without that being the intention. I expect two things:
one, that in their imagery there is a representation of the image anchored to a
physical fact, and I insist on some interesting image; and the other, that they lose
respect for the photo; that they know that there is someone behind who is giving
intention to that photo, to encourage you to consume, to positions that, in short,
we are even liars and that they have to look at us with few words.

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SAIDEL BRITO (Ecuador), Workshop Drawing, Social Space and Expanded Field:
“Art is a place you can inhabit and can exist in a different way”
Saidel Brito (Matanzas, Cuba, 1973) studied in the National Arts School of
Cubanacán and in the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) of La Habana. He has lived in
Ecuador since 1998. He has a Master’s in Higher Education from the Universidad
Casa Grande de Guayaquil. Since 2013, he is pursuing a doctorate in Art Sciences at
the University of Arts in Cuba. He is professor at the Universidad Casa Grande and
Rector of the Instituto Superior Tecnológico de Artes del Ecuador, ITAE. Highlighted
among 16 personal exhibitions are: Ruinas del relato (2011) and Habeas Corpus
(2004), Galería Dpm, Guayaquil; Ni de allá ni de aquí, Galería Habana (2002) and
La historia es una gata que se defiende boca arriba, Museo Artes, Quito (1999). He
has participated in more than 70 group exhibitions in Asia, Europe and America,
including: New art from Cuba, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1995); Tras la
pérdida de las colonias, Ponce Art Museum in Puerto Rico, Museo Extremeño e
Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo in Badajoz, and Cultural Centre, Manila,
Philippines (1998); Andén 16, Count Duke Cultural Centre of Madrid and the
Metropolitan Cultural Centre of Quito (2005); Waiting List, Mestna Galerija
Ljubljana, Slovenia (2005); Biennial of Valencia, Encuentro entre dos mares: Otras
Contemporaneidades. Convivencias Problemáticas, Spain (2007); 5th Biennial
The(S)files, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2007) and 90´s apelando a los archivos
de la memoria, Modern Art Museum of Cuenca (2011). In 2009, he received an
award at the X International Biennial of Cuenca.
www.dpmgallery.com
www.itae.edu.ec
www.deskafuero.itae.edu.ec
Could you tell you basically what your workshop consists of?
We are working along with the young people in, let’s say a major way, on a drawing
workshop, Social space and expanded field, and we start from the most basic idea
of drawing: pencil, line, point paper, up to the use of drawing in an expanded sense
of space, also expanding the idea of the material, of the limits of the drawing
discipline itself and relating that wager with a vast sense of the medium, the
context, and the physical space where we are located, the locality, the history;
we would say, with the psycho-geography of the site. And we are already in the
production stage. The students, the young people, the participants have had
practical encounters with exercises I have guided, as well as more theoretical talks
regarding contemporary art in the last 50 or 60 years, where drawing has taken
part of this new logic that the workshop recovers. So now we are in tune with the
teaching proposal we laid out.
Those variants that you just pointed out, are defined as extended drawing?
Yes, it has to do with drawing in the sense that contemporary art has of expanded
field, or the expansion of the artistic field for all languages is one of the determinants
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of the differentiating elements of artistic practices post 60’s. Of course drawing has
a key course, it has a fundamental role. For example, in the separation that is done
in conceiving the work, in the production process, drawing has a key element,
drawing as a record of a project outside the artistic space, outside the world of art,
outside the gallery. Drawing in the practices of the 60’s and 70’s occupied a very
important role, somewhat determinant we would say, defining the new notion of
art that is given in the contemporary statute of culture.
And, what do you teach when you teach art?
When I teach art it’s very important to me that the students enjoy the knowledge,
that they reach a point of understanding…
When you teach art, are you teaching how to think…
When I teach art I teach how to think, I teach how to approach art as an activity
plus social body. It’s important in the teaching experience to understand that
art is not elevated for any purpose, nor does it respond to a creative demiurge
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or to a subject different from other practices of knowledge and human activity;
that is, art is an activity that needs discipline. I teach that, to work. Through art I
teach new ways of relating, establishing and initiating new relationships with the
world. If I had to choose an element that organizes the idea of artistic teaching
it would be to offer the student colleagues the opportunity to establish new
relationships with the world, based on industriousness, and understanding, on
understanding knowledge as a collective process, a process that is constructed,
that needs generosity, that needs critique, responsibility, and that art is a place you
can inhabit and can exist in a different way; that is what I teach.
The next question has to do with the educational system, in this case in Ecuador,
not in your native country. What influence does it have in instilling an interest for
the arts in the students? Does it work or not? What is your assessment?
I live in a country where art is normally subject to social austerity. Art is not really
defined as an important activity. I also come from a city in which artistic practices
have historically been undervalued until a very short time ago. Art was not even
defined as a profession. Luckily, that has changed. The work that a group of artists,
myself included, has done to develop excellent and rigorous professional artistic
education processes has helped to transform the artistic, cultural and social scene
and a different environment can now be appreciated. It is an environment that
also coincides with a change in the city, urbanization, etc. done by the city of
Guayaquil, but also in Ecuador, in a social transformation process that is also very
interesting. And in that context, culture occupies a totally different role. And it is a
wonderful opportunity to be able to participate in these good times in history, at
these precise times in which art, thought, and culture are embodied differently in
the peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience.
There is a saying that anyone can be an artist. Do you agree with that? What
sense do the academy and the title have?
Well, that is an argument of Beuys. That is part of Joseph Beuysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ideo-aesthetic,
the idea that art is in any elemental activity of the subject, that any person with
certain capacities can produce art. That is also an aesthetic tradition today,
a postulate of art in our time, almost a maxim, but it also needs to be critically
reviewed. Education is important, not necessarily formal or academic education,
but self-imposing curiosity in the face of thought, tradition, historical references,
and the problems of our time. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t approach art today with naivety. That
is increasingly farther away from creative possibilities and the production of
knowledge. The topic of education, titles, etc. is another chapter, because the
artistic system has been added to university systems and of course that has also
resulted in crises and paradoxes. But based on the experience I have in this case
as a teacher faced with young people who are looking for a way that is not so long
and taking much more itinerant and shorter routes to achieve a stage of artistic
production, of understanding artistic phenomena, of course the school is very
important.
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How important were your teachers? What can you tell us about that, whether at
the university level or in workshops.
My teachers, my few teachers, who somehow constituted what I later was, who
opened up paths for me, who marked the fundamental guidelines, are intellectuals,
artists, and teachers to whom I am eternally grateful. I have a list of five or six
professors from the university process because the times of childhood, secondary
school, etc. have a role and occupy a different place in your education and life,
and of course they are important too. But at the university level I had the luxury of
having marvellous teachers, who I not only respect and not only admire, and not
only to whom I am eternally grateful, but also who I love.
Do you have an artistic education method or model that could be considered
perfect? Do you believe in that?
No, there is no perfect artistic education model. Even when at the level of the work
methodology, of curricular proposals, you can realize how in the same site, at the
same time, with two different groups, the processes are totally opposed, dissimilar.
So, no, it doesn’t exist. I believe that art has to take charge of the here and now,
and artistic education has to be attentive to that here and now. Normally, art is far
ahead of teaching and artistic education processes. The scheme, the model, the
“perfect methodology” would be that the asymmetries between artistic research
and artistic educating are not too big. If you could shorten the stretch between
artistic education and artistic avant-garde, I think that would be the recipe, if
the term fits. It is a wager that from my viewpoint is more interesting and more
productive.
Finally, how has your experience been here at the 4th Contemporary Art Week,
specifically with your workshop and in the encounter with your students?
Extraordinary, really surprising. When I started the process I didn’t imagine that
I was going to be enjoying it as much as I enjoy it today. We have all worked
brutally hard. But also with enthusiasm, and desire. A really marvellous collective
process has been developed. The guys have been able to very quickly tune in to
concerns that are complicated, they are not simple processes. Nevertheless they
have assimilated them in a very fresh but at the same time very critical, very fun
way, and they are working a lot. It’s not done, there is still nearly half left to do
and at this point I am very happy. We have also had students, a pair of young
people, with special capacities, who have other learning processes with which I
was not accustomed. I was very worried the first day. We worked on it, we have
had external support from one of the organizers, from the colleges and from these
boy’s schools and we have had help. The teacher who has come has given me
tips and has been able to help me. And now, today in particular, which is where
we have been able to produce at 100% we were working all day, collecting what
was done the first two sessions. Today was an eruption of ideas, it was an internal
bombardment. Even what I had initially proposed has been dynamited in a very
rich, very productive way, and frankly I am very happy with the experience we are
having in the workshop.
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For Friday, when the domes are supposed to be opened for the community to be
able to visit them, what do you expect to have achieved with this workshop from
now until that day, with the rest of the process?
I hope to achieve two things: first, that for all the participants, myself included, but
above all for the young people in the workshop that what has occurred this week
will be a lasting memory; that it will be a truly memorable experience for them. For
me it will be, I have no doubt. And second, that the public can come and also the
public from the other groups that are here, also the families, everyone who arrives
from the middle of Antofagasta can find curiosities, intelligence, and belonging
here, on the part of the young peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, a different approach to art, different
even from the medium of drawing itself, which is so close to the experience of the
subject in general. That is the second thing I would like to achieve. Hopefully it will
be. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know, but we are betting, we are working hard so the visitors can feel as
we do that we are facing a different experience.

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TOMÁS RIVAS (Chile), Workshop Does humanity have a chance successfully
survive, and if so, how?
“What we are generating is an interest in finding out, in knowing”
Tomás Rivas (Santiago, 1975) is an artist and professor; Master in Fine Arts (MFA)
from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, United States; Postgraduate Degree
in Art from the Pontificia Universidad Católica (PUC) of Santiago. Other studies
and residencies in institutions such as the Department of Design of the National
Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and the residency program LUX Art Institute,
United States, and RIAA, Argentina. Since 2007 he has been professor of the School
of Art of the PUC. Currently, he is also director of the Macchina Gallery of the East
Campus and Head of the Extension of the PUC School of Arts. In 2009, along with
four other Chilean artists, he founded Taller Bloc in Santiago, a space dedicated
to the production, education and dissemination of visual arts. In 2012, he gave
classes in the Master of Fine Art Program at the University of Notre Dame. He has
exhibited individually and collectively in Chile and abroad, reaching instances such
as the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington D.C (2011); Saatchi Gallery and
Philips de Pury, London (2010); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de la Universidad
de Sao Paulo (MAC USP), Sao Paulo (2010); Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris
(2010); Museum of Art and Design, New York (2009); Museum of Visual Arts,
Santiago (2009); Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Victorian College of the Arts (VCA),
Melbourne, Australia (2009); Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel (2008); Galería
A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro (2007); Centro Cultural Matucana 100, Santiago
(2007); and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), Santiago (2006).
www.tomasrivas.com
www.tallerbloc.cl
www.dieecke.cl/tomas-rivas/
What does the workshop consist of?
In resolving or dialoguing on a series of questions regarding the future of humanity,
of the human species, and testing or surveying the interests of the students from
third and fourth year secondary school who participate in the workshop, to see
what they discover about the future, speculate about the future, and to see how
they can propose some improvement.
What do you teach when you teach art?
I think that what I teach is not to be or to realize objects of art. What some
professors who share a similar philosophy, such as that shared by my colleagues at
Taller Bloc, try to teach is the development of artistic thinking. That thinking has
thousands of ways of manifesting itself from a technical viewpoint, and what we
try to do is develop a concrete interest in a question, on an issue, or a problem and
that real interest is then converted into a work.
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How would you assess the educational system regarding instilling an interest in
the arts?
There I would divide the educational system into two fundamental stages: the first
is elementary and secondary education. I think that in that aspect we are quite
indebted to our students in lyceums, schools, and the educational system in general.
My evaluation is quite negative regarding what is practiced and done in lyceums
and schools in Chile, above all in receiving first year Bachelor of Arts students, which
I have realized. And the second area is university education, where we are still
anchored and subject to problems and academic basics that have maintained a rigor
and too much limitation on artistic education. I believe that process is improving.
The universities are proposing new ways of educating art students and there I have
higher expectations, especially if artists continue to be in charge of those academic
programs and not cultural agents or people who do not have a commitment to more
concrete education.
Anyone can be an artist? Do you agree with that statement? What sense do the
academy and the titles have in saying, I am an artist?
Everyone can be artists. I know great artists who are self-taught. Every norm on
art or every dogma we could think of is destroyed in the first example we can find
around the corner, and the truth is that I have never believed in any type of dogma or
the need for a specific requirement to be an artist. So, clearly, everyone can be one.
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Please refer to the importance that your teachers had, whether teachers from
formal or informal workshops in the university itself. Have they had any impact
on your work, your development?
Yes, a very big impact. Especially teachers and professors I had the advantage of
having during my school years. I believe they deeply marked me because they
taught me, for example, to think about the drawing or to think with the drawing,
as very simple things that were very useful to me in developing myself as an artist
and also to be a good art student, motivated, interested and curious. I believe
that I owe them a good part of my vocation or interest as an artist. Then, in the
university, you start discovering paths and professors that help you in different
stages and clearly there have been very important stages. But perhaps the last
stage of my master’s is the one that marked me the most, with a professor who
understood or was able to see in my work as an artist a possibility for carrying out
a very important academic project, and I felt that my work finally had an objective,
precisely to create a type of thinking, create a different way of facing problems,
and in that sense, this professor named Robin Rhodes helped me a lot.
We would like you to tell us about your perfect model, if there is an ideal artistic
education model for you. What do you think it would be, or what would be your
proposal in that regard?
Thinking about a perfect model is maybe like utopia. An ideal model starts with
a kind of ideal student. We at the university work with entrance and graduate
profiles; that is, with what profile you receive a student or expect to receive a
student, or that ideally a first year student should have, and what would be the
profile of a fourth year graduate. We could develop that example. The ideal
entrance profile is a student interested in knowledge in general, in learning, in
knowing; a student with a very high level of enthusiasm, with a very high level
of humility, then, there are few from a generation meet that objective. But we
do know that a high percentage end up being artists. So maybe it isn’t necessary
to have that ideal entrance profile; everyone can develop and become good
artists, working with discipline and determination. With regard to the ideal
graduate profile, that profile is of an artist who wants to continue learning, who
understands that the stage in which an artist is at in his or her career is only a
stage, and that many other stages of learning will follow, hopefully more study,
more perfectioning. Because the truth is that I don’t have the slightest idea and we
don’t know the principal requirements there could be for an artist in ten or twenty
more years. The education of an artist does not end at graduation, so clearly we
see how those capacities are transformed into an important will to be an artist and
to develop in the field of art, and how all this is unknown. The truth is that the only
thing I have regarding the graduate profile are doubt and questions that will be
resolved in upcoming years.
In the case of SACO, of participating in the 4th Contemporary Art Week, how has
your experience been in the realization of your workshop and the encounter
with these young people?
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This could be defined as an ideal condition or an ideal context, because what we
do in a week generates such a big difference compared to what they do the rest of
the year that the level of attention and enthusiasm and the questions and curiosity
they have for realizing these workshops is enormous, just for the difference, for the
distance from daily life, what they normally do, what each one does in their place
of origin. So that difference generates an ideal condition for developing a compact,
intense program in which they live together and learn a lot about themselves from
their peers. I believe the best we can do is to generate or catalyse certain ways of
thinking and encourage them to continue ahead during four or five days. But what
they are learning is actually from their colleagues and that, for me, is the ideal
situation; that is an ideal condition for an artistic workshop.
What do you expect as the final result of the objects the students are working
on?
I expect them to feel happy, for them to feel proud of what they have done, of
what has happened this week. Not that they feel they did good or bad. I believe
we are trying to generate a very concrete emphasis on the process and for that
they have to be building a memory of what they did these four or five days, and
from the experience of that time they will then be able to assess this process as
something productive and important for what they want to do later on. We are
not forming or instilling artistic values to convert all of them into artists. I at least
believe that what we are generating is interest in finding out, in knowing.

Interviews held by: Camila DĂ­az and Alex Moya.
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WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF SACO4

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SYMBIOTIC SPACE
Within the Framework of is a collaborative space of SACO, generated in 2014 in
response to the interest shown by various autonomous, private and state actors
in participating and getting involved in different ways in the Contemporary Art
Week, nourishing the public and generating resonance, experience and production
in and from the region of Antofagasta. The inclusion each year of a selection of
professional opportunities, coherent with the curating of SACO and self-financed,
enables generating a heterogeneous schedule and behind that, networks,
encounters and new ideas for crossed actions.
The local public not only enjoys the annual event but also Within the framework
of SACO, they go to a concert, learn during a workshop, express an opinion in
the discussion, or participate in an art contest. The SACO organization also offers
interested projects local and national dissemination in virtual and print media, local
organization of announcements, logistical support, pre-production and production
of events (concerts, dance shows, performances, etc.), preparation of equipment
and spaces according to specific requirements, audio visual recording, complete
organization of residences in The Driest Place on Earth a finally, presence in the
SACO video and annual book. The relationship that is established has a symbiotic
nature and strengthens all those involved.
In 2015, we have included three opportunities in this format in SACO4 that are
very different from each other: the concert and workshop by the visual and sound
artists Mario Z, along with the Really Contemporary Museum (Alejandro Gonzรกlez
and Daniel Cerda); the second edition of the MAVI/Escondida contest for a working
visit by a local artist between the Museum of Visual Arts and the Taller Bloc in
Santiago; and an intensive national residency for ten artists in The Driest Place on
Earth, in coordination with the Council of Culture and the Art.

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RESIDENCY IN THE DRIEST PLACE ON EARTH
LONG HISTORY OF A GREEN SPOT IN THE DESERT
The average annual precipitation in Quillagua, depending on the source, ranges
between 0 and 0.2 millimetres. The oasis is the driest place, in the driest desert
in the world. NASA scientists perform tests there of artefacts that will fly in space.
Microbes are in a lost position; before the organic material can begin to rot, it dries
out. Everything is turned into dust. The clouds that appear in the sky once in a
while do not provide shade, and the omnipresent sun enables understanding why
it was considered a god in all the religions of the Andean high plateau.
The giant figures, geoglyphs, dispersed in the hills, reach up to 30 metres in length.
They date from between the X and the XV century B.C. and their concentration in
this area between Maria Elena and Quillagua, is the largest on earth (approximately
400 drawings). There are probably signs of devotion to the god Inti, or perhaps
served to indicate the road for the caravans that travelled through the desert. There
are various hypotheses related to the meaning of the reliefs, however up until
now there are no exhaustive investigations on their meaning. So the possibility
remains open that the Chug Chug set of geoglyphs does not constitute a sacred
object, as tends to be thought, but rather a pre-Colombian visual communication
system, promoting the village, which had always lived from commerce, bartering
and agriculture.
The oldest evidence of the existence of the oasis goes back to the VII century
B.C. For more than a thousand years, the location of the pueblo was strategically
attractive: on the Inca Trail, on the bank of the only river that crosses the desert
and halfway between Los Andes and the Pacific. Quillagua was a place of rest,
food and an important centre of cultural and material exchange for the pueblos
that lived in the territories that now belong to Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.
Lieutenant governor Pedro de Valdivia, named by the Spanish conquistador
Francisco Pizarro and responsible for the colonization of the lands currently
belonging to Chile, visited Quillagua in the year 1540. He was probably the first
European to reach the oasis. After suffocating the resistance of the indigenous
pueblos in almost the entire southwest territory of the continent (the AraucanĂ­a
was the only territory in America not to be occupied, or at least not in the times
of the conquest), he received the title of General Captain of the Realm of Chile.
The principal interest of the Spaniards in the XVI century was concentrated in the
southern part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. During that period the majority of the
principal cities of this area were founded (Lima and Potosi, among others). And the
desert, so difficult to control and with its unbearable climate, remained for some
time with the status of formally conquered territory, but unoccupied. It was just
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with the War of Independence and the creation of new States that the situation
changed radically.
In 1841 Quillagua became a border town between the Republic of Peru and
Bolivia. Like before, it was a place of conflict and friction between the Atacameña
and Aymara cultures. Now two flags and different uniforms appeared on either
side of the Loa River.
The War of the Pacific was another point of inflection in the history of Quillagua.
This time, the Atacama Desert was incorporated into Chile; Peru lost a large part of
its territory in the south, and Bolivia its access to the sea. The oasis on the river did
not stop being a border, no longer between countries but rather between regions,
within the Republic of Chile.
In the second half of the XIX century, the saltpetre rush broke out, a phenomenon
comparable only to the gold rush, and caught up a broad range of European
capitalists. Mostly British businessmen and investors got on ships destined for
Valparaiso, willing to take on the challenge of populating the driest desert in
the world with the working masses in exchange for the expectation of quickly
generating very lucrative international businesses. This new embodiment of the
conquest attracted other investors – banks, railroad, and electricity supply. The
Europeans no longer had to struggle to dominate the lands, crossing the infinite
space on horseback; now they received the rights of the State.
Chile, at the beginning of the last century, became the biggest exporter of
saltpetre in the world. The vision of work and a better future attracted tens of
thousands of immigrants from the poor, rural south to the Atacama Desert. The
British introduced the Charleston and the habit of having tea to the desert, but
also the extreme exploitation that bordered on slavery. Unequal rules of the game
between the Europeans and Chileans paradoxically ended with the discovery of
synthetic saltpetre, made by the Germans for war purposes before the Second
World War.
The history of the saltpetre works continues to be an important element in the
construction of the identity and the rooting of the inhabitants of northern Chile,
over these infinite plains of dirt and rock, baked by the sun. And even though the
routes have changed and the new roads left Quillagua outside the most trafficked
routes, customs control, which opens access to the Iquique free zone still operates
alongside the town. Few travellers choose this road through the middle of the
desert when they can travel north and south along the coast.
The indigenous cemeteries were sacked. The wave of destruction was started by
the treasure hunters, who quickly became smugglers, followed by illegal collectors
and their vendors, and finally, the villagers themselves who in the 50’s and 60’s of
the last century exchanged the last mummies for powdered milk.
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RESISTENCE, STARS AND AMULETS
As a result of the pollution of the Loa River by the Codelco state mining industry in
1997, the number of Quillagua inhabitants decreased from 1,200 to 500. The loss
of crops due to the absorption of heavy metals in the soil forced the majority of
the farmers to migrate to the cities. A few years later, those who remained were
victims of a swindle by the State, losing a major share of the rights to the water
from the river.
Currently, during the harvest, from December to March, the Loa River basin dries
up. A water truck brings potable water to Quillagua from the town of Maria Elena,
two hours away. At night the oasis, where 120 people live, is lit up by the stars and
lanterns.
In the search for a way to withstand, to call for public attention regarding the
dramatic situation of the oasis and to put pressure on the local political scene, in
2007 thirteen families from Quillagua legally registered as an Aymara indigenous
community. Now some are trying to find their roots, going back to believing in Inti
and the Pachamama, reviving abandoned rituals, making sense of the words and
objects, recovering the language that was almost completely forgotten, with the
hope that the resurrection of the native identity will constitute a shield or amulet
in the fight for survival.

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OASIS LABORATORY
The accumulation of climatic, anthropological, political, sociological and other
factors caused the Group SE VENDE to choose the oasis as the centre of operation
and of the residencies The Driest Place on Earth. Since the year 2012 we have
received more than fifty visits and fifteen residencies, mainly from outside Chile.
The majority have been visual artists, curators, photographers, and culture
journalists, but also ethnography and anthropology researchers, filmmakers, and
in general, people who look for and believe in the frontier zones of different areas.
Quillagua is a laboratory, it concentrates and does not distract. It is where many
of the important contemporary tensions are present: the loss of water, of identity,
abandonment, internal divisions, and the destruction of heritage, in an impactful
and extreme context. It would seem impossible to conjugate so many global
problems in a small oasis in the desert. At the same time, Quillagua is sufficiently
far away from our urban and semi-modern reality. In order to investigate it you
have to look from outside, because in some way it belongs to another world. It also
tells us something about ourselves. A residence in the oasis necessarily becomes an
introspection, where you are face to face with yourself and your issues, regardless
of where they come from.

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EXPERIENCE IN FOUR LANGUAGES
In June 2015, a national call was opened for Chilean arts, held thanks to the
agreement between the National Council for Culture and the Art and the Group
SE VENDE. From the areas of visual arts, dance, photography and new media,
more than a hundred artists from all over the national territory passed through
the admissions review. The interest in this contest that was held for the first time
far surpassed the organizers’ expectations. From the 6th to the 12th of September,
Elisa Balmaceda, Rainer Krause, Natascha de Cortillas, Julio Escobar, Celeste Rojas,
Luciano Paiva, Francisca Gazitúa, Gonzalo Santander, Rafael Silva and Camila Díaz
carried out an intense residency, both for the conditions inherent to the place as
well as in a personal sense and in direct relation to the surroundings. The historian
and researcher, Damir Galaz-Mandakovic, specialized in anthropological, migratory
and sociological contexts of lands in the Andes and the Andean foothills that today
belong to western Bolivia, southern Peru, northern Chile and northwest Argentina,
accompanied the residents during the first two days, providing them with context
regarding the territory, its past and present, and guiding visitors to the heritage
sites and going into depth on each one’s topics of interest.

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Quillagua has triggered questions that the noise of the city normally keeps quiet.
Artists from Punta Arenas, Puerto Montt, Concepcion, Santiago and Antofagasta
toured the oasis and its surrounding areas, felt the singularity of the north, its sky
and its land, getting to know a part of Chile the existence of which perhaps they
had not even suspected. Body, sound, light and time were the main focuses of the
processes that were experienced.
The Sloman Dam, an abandoned industrial heritage site and national monument
from the beginning of the last century, 30 kilometres from Quillagua toward Maria
Elena, was the space chosen by Francisca Gazitúa, Gonzalo Santander and Rafael
Silva to perform their research and carry out some interventions that were born
from a space that has been forgotten, covered in dust, that still tells of a project
that was ambitious for that time – illuminating the pampa with electrical energy.
In a proposal corresponding to the world of dance, made up of three independent
acts performed consecutively in one night, the artists took over the administration
entrance hallway (Francisca - dance and Gonzalo - photography), the first room
of those premises (Rafael), and the main machine room (Francisca and Rafael).
Silva’s intervention was accompanied by a video of a mirror that broke repetitively,
and overlaid the corporal proposal, confusing the projection with the artist’s
movements. The two remaining scenes were theatrically illuminated by Julio
Escobar with sodium light bulbs.
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The plastic flowers, used in all the interventions by Rafael Silva in Quillagua,
colourful and synthetic, caused a pleasure, a profound attraction, both for the
colour and the false expectation of life, evidencing that at times only the illusory is
possible and how what is artificial is easily imposed on the natural context.
The duo of GazitĂşa & Santander performed multiple interventions in the area
surrounding the oasis. Francisca, with the movement that oscillated between
explosion and silence, between desperation and a self-ordered calm, strongly
erupted on the landscape, evoking fear, anguish and the eternal imbalance
between remembering and forgetting.

The complete results of this work are available in the format of a photo book:
http://issuu.com/gonzalosantanderastudillo/docs/quillagua_portada__2_files_
merged

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Water Mirrorâ&#x20AC;? is a video record that brings together poetry in the image, dance
in the movement, memory in the sound and above all a watchful eye over our
water resources. This artistic project takes the body and its composition (water)
to intervene in the desert as a container of life, strength and projection, to make
the arid space bloom symbolically. In this instant, the materiality helps to construct
the lost, forgotten landscape, where the paradoxical is presented through what is
artificial. The plastic takes on importance in accompanying the body, water that
intervenes in the arid land creating artificial blossoming in places where there
only existed some spring that enabled life around it. This way, the valuation of
the surroundings forms what constitutes a basic principle, which is the quality of
life, to make room for something more complex and permanent, which the natural
patrimony and cultural heritage of our territory should be.
Rafael Silva

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Walk, travel, exploreâ&#x20AC;Ś.
The movement and the photo are already starting to fragment, as they create
times, colours and images expressed in a body, but that will never be repeated in
the same way.
Living from what is forgotten reflects how the geography of the space, in this case
the desert, creates the corporal and physical paths, in the mobility of the bodies,
the history and narration appear in them.
Through the images, visual puzzles appear that reflected the corporal maps.
Wind, cold, heat, solitude, hardness, lines, wrinkles, salt, fragmentation, miningâ&#x20AC;Ś
The body relates and expresses.
Between the modern and the ancestral, the geographic dichotomy produced by the
place itself is reflected.
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Magical spaces that are fragmented and invested by human beings and their
“urban growth”. The abandonment of the internal and external physical space, the
materiality and the oxide appear on the skin and the land mobilized by feet, hands,
fingernails… body.
The melancholy of the desert and its solitude let the body take on symbolic
prominence, contrasting the place’s infinite tonalities. The wind resonates, creating
constant melodies and pauses, leading into corporal stimuli that with the passing
of time are represented in the place’s sequence and narrations.

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The temperature and its extremes make clear the salt, the maintenance, being
there and at the same time petrified without being able to move or mobilize.
Walk to get to know, walk to explore, walk to discover. Living from what was
forgotten was our own story of Quillagua, our geographic travel through the
space; a place that is present and inhabited, that lives awaiting a past.
Francisca GazitĂşa
Gonzalo Santander
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An illusory eye of water or mirror that reflected the luminous sky from the bottom
of a big crater in Quillagua, was the work of Elisa Balmaceda. Thermal rectangles
covered the rocky surface, contrasting with the surroundings. The universe was
reflected and reconnected in the lowest point of the Valley of the Meteorites. A
certain type of celestial symmetry versus the axis of the horizon, a little presence
of one in the other, like yin and yang, alluded to equilibrium, not only visual.

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The artist’s second intervention was related to the electric fields and
electromagnetic radiation resulting from the research she performed before
the residency. The initial project laid out the action itself, carried out below the
cables that cross the desert, consisting of making visible the electrosmog, where
“fluorescent light tubes are used to capture the ‘invisible’ energy that circulates
in the air and emanates from the high voltage towers”. The video in black and
white that was the final result of this intervention formed part of the 12th Media
Arts Biennial of Santiago that was held in October 2015 in the National Fine Arts
Museum.

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Celeste Rojas framed the small crater with a white circle, a graphic, fragile and
ephemeral gesture, but at the same type potent for its simplicity. It divides the
infinite, encloses a point, a hole in the plain. Elisa Balmaceda ran along the edge
of the precipice, in an act without beginning or end, round and round, challenging
the limits of the body itself.
In the rural school of Quillagua, which has 22 students between kindergarten and
elementary, Celeste carried out a research exercise, asking the children to draw
the river, its representation in space. The works became an allegorical series or an
imaginary diagnosis. “I was interested in that symbolic construction of something
like a ‘map’ of their territory, thinking about future meanings of my work there”,
the artist explained.

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A body walks and runs in circles until it gets tired - from and to its own limits,
around a crater located just a few metres from the urban area of Quillagua. The
body falls due to exhaustion and in raising itself draws a line around â&#x20AC;&#x201C; its mark on
the earth, the signification of a space from the route, from the time that passed,
with lime and salt, elements that represent the area in reference to the history of
saltpetre and what was employed to construct it.
Celeste Rojas

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Rainer Krause toured the desert in long and solitary walks, accompanied only by
his sound recording equipment and the omnipresent sun of the desert, which
turned the Germanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s white face into an intense red. The Sloman Dam, the river,
the bottom of the crater is where they saw him; who knows where else he had
walked. The contact microphones appeared in different places such as on the
railing of the stairs in the machine room at the dam, tracking something secretive,
probably between the vibration of rusted metal and a nostalgia of a stairway in
disuse covered in dust for several decades. Rainer Krause, Rainer Krause, Rainer
Krause, repeated one by one all the participants in the residency, in front of the
microphone, contributing with their voices to a sound project that the artist was
developing in parallel.

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In the world of artistic exploration of Natascha de Cartillas, food far surpasses the
need to feed yourself, taking over symbolism, identity and politics. Based on visual
arts, her culinary actions and interventions â&#x20AC;&#x153;articulate local production systems,
open markets and culinary identity being inserted as an organic weave that recovers
the community exercise in artistic activity. The projects Desterritorialidades
Culinarias, Chile amasa su pan (Culinary Des-territorialities, Chile kneads its bread)
and Sobremesa (Table Talk) are three parallel focuses of exploitation and visual
representation that address different aspects of these organic-culinary relations,
using photography, video, and installation as visual support languageâ&#x20AC;? she pointed
out.
With Natascha, we rediscover the rituals of preparing, serving and sharing,
processes that are contemporaneously automated and deprived of reflexion.
The artist converts what takes away our time (peeling, dicing, frying, cooking,
seasoning, mixing) from doing supposedly more important things and turns it into
an act that is valuable in itself, regardless of the final result. The process is now the
work, or at least a part of it. A shared rite, unhurried, in this case with two Bolivian
cooks, with who recipes are exchanged, but also life stories and experiences that
go beyond the pot and frying pan.
The night of the 11th of September, a significant date in contemporary Chilean
memory, remembering the military coup in 1973, we all shared a dinner
Sobremesa, where the flavours and products from southern Chile shared the space
with a typical Bolivian menu.

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In the big crater, dressed in a white apron and a black handkerchief on her head,
a bakery worker construed a mourning rite with her body. In her barefoot dance
on the rock she evoked the Mapuche connection with ancestors, the divine, the
earth and death. The circle drawn with stones condensed the deep pain over those
who are no longer here, literally or symbolically, for those who were detained and
disappeared, and for the native inhabitants of Quillagua. Mrs. Felisaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bread was
connected to the earth in the form of a cross, marking lines of feeling. Finally, the
bakery worker stopped her dance and left, becoming little by little just a point in
the emptiness.

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Relational, in a formal view, is Luciano Paiva’s way of working. However,
“relational” sounds hard and technical. It doesn’t fit with Luciano. It makes noise,
makes you feel uncomfortable. His work is in the human fabric, which goes much
beyond “relating”. The greeting, the smile, the look; the first encounter with each
inhabitant of Quillagua becomes a warm and authentic moment that opened the
doors of homes and of people. Each approach, flavoured with respect, attention
and the necessary time. The concept of neighbour was resuscitated from the
dust and the handling, not to evangelize but to listen, to accompany the elder’s
solitude for a while. In a pilgrimage from house to house, he heard testimonies,
lifted spirits, gave advice, and shared a cup of tea, among tears or laughter. And he
took photos. Luciano is a psychologist who proposed to make souls visible.

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Based on sound, Camila DĂ­az installed herself at the bottom of the medium crater
where she found an excavation, a vestige of unfruitful explorations, in search
of fragments of the mythical meteorite. There for two nights she built a camp,
to record and experiment with the sound characteristics of this extensive and
pronounced hollow, along with SebastiĂĄn Rojas. The empty rectangular space fit
and two powerful speakers, 500 watts each, were buried and invisible. The audio
record compiled in the cascade of the Sloman Dam served as raw material for
the creation of a sound piece that reached our senses from below the bottom of
the crater. The spherical shape of the void strengthened the sensation. A dusty
substance rose, inducing clouds of dirt, resulting from a vibration caused by the
low sounds.

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The final intervention in the crater had powerful lighting collaboration from Julio
Escobar, who based on his experience in performing arts conjugated the sound
with the visual, converting, along with Camila, a night in the desert into a unique
and incomparable experience. A very powerful warm sodium light insinuated the
opening of an immense depth downward, a threshold to the other side, unknown,
terrestrial, or apocalyptic, but at the same time very attractive.
Julioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work converted the investigations in situ of the sound and corporal,
respectively, of Camila DĂ­az, Francisca GazitĂşa, Gonzalo Santander and Rafael
Silva, into staging of great strength and coherence with the place. The light was
transformed into a vehicle for each work that enhanced and poeticized it. His
capacity for understanding the search for the other contributed to the collective
experience and enables going into the processes experienced by artists from
diverse disciplines.

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His personal work called on not only the residency team. On a cold August night
there were also some residents of Quillagua present, when alongside the train
station an old pepper tree with its branches falling to the ground was gradually
transformed from a dark spot in the landscape into a vibrating object of surprising
texture. Like a meticulous drawing, each branch marked a line on the yellowish
background. With this lighting from within, there appeared the contour of an old
gate pasted on the trunk of the tree, invisible in daylight in the dry bush. And with
that, there awakened a thousand stories among the branches, all possible and all
fictitious.

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The residency in Quillagua in September 2015 was “a work process, visual
exercises and experience in territory, with frictions between the dance and the
visual arts, the sound and the scenography”, said Natascha de Cortillas. They were
intense days of individual processes of getting to know, choosing and acting; night
sessions of sharing each others’ previous works and processes, joint research that
arose based on what was experienced there and spontaneous collaborations. The
process of digesting, rethinking, cleansing and editing is just starting.
We thank Sebastián Rojas and everyone who enriched and supplemented this
record with their personal file: Luciano Paiva, Felipe Coddou, Natascha de Cortillas,
Elisa Balmaceda, Celeste Rojas, Rodrigo Pacheco, Rafael Silva, Gonzalo Santander
and Francisca Gazitúa.

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TRAVEL NOTES
a) Empirics
The experience of travelling, of going from one place to another, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;uncertaintyâ&#x20AC;?
of the unknown or the anxiousness to enjoy it are elements that make travel a
motivating and provocative experience. In travelling you acquire knowledge but
you also move yourself to others, to another context. That shock and mixture
of information that is produced would constitute an additive result; beyond the
pretentions placed in the result, the process/move is an experience of knowledge.
A traveller records information based on the places or feelings of greatest interest.
Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching become perfect forms of translation
and reading languages outside of the landscape visited.
Each landscape can be seen and studied, presenting itself to use as a big exposed
library, full of textures, sounds, colours, stories, beliefs and customs. Classifying
this diversity of information and transforming it into experience gives us tools to
be able to generate analysis and unknowns.
b) The cross
Who I am? Glorious rhetorical lies on the luminosity of sound art is a project laid
out based on three aspects:
- Talking, its classifications and practices.
- Listening, its devices and forms of perception.
- Sound and its relationships with an image in motion.
Formulate a series of live presentations of the project as an audio visual show
and propose doing it in different parts of the country as a tour, intending to take
the travel experience as a process beyond the workshop or home studio. Take
the finished art product to other formats that enable expanding its closed reading
producing new spaces, fissures and relations.
In this sense, hold a workshop or rather an encounter with local artists and
subsequently include them in part of a concert as an improvisation exercise, justify
absolutely the idea of travel as a process, as a formation or deformation experience,
as a platform for mixing and remixing, of capturing and reinterpretation (travel as
sampler).

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c) The information
SACO4, as an educative and creation platform in Antofagasta, enables the
information transfer experience to be strongly transversal, for travel to become
an experience loaded with perceptive formation. The city and its inhabitants, the
desert and its history, would be stimuli, vehicles of desired information.
Landscapes, both visual and sound, not only talk about a mining history but also of
the political and social changes of the high immigrant population, of the ecological
problems related to pollution, of the non-places (malls and big stores) and their
habits of empty fascination.
MZ, septiembre 2015
(On 3rd and 4th of August 2015, Mario Z and the project The Really Contemporary
Museum, made up by Alejandro González and Daniel Cerda, held a sound art
workshop in the Huanchaca Cultural Park. The 6th of that month in the same space,
the artists presented an experimental concert that reached about 120 people who
filled the auditorium. Also participating were those who were part of the workshop,
authors who in Antofagasta work based on visual or sound, such as Camila Díaz,
Francisco Vergara, Jorge Guerrero “Fido” and Erick Oviedo Hanssen “Vamsick”, as
well as art professor Manuel Araya and opera singer Paulette L´Huissier).

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ALL IN A MONTH: SCHOLARSHIP FOR ARTISTS FROM ANTOFAGASTA
In the framework of SACO4, this year the 2nd version of the MAVI / Minera
Escondida Residency was held for an artist from the region of Antofagasta. Thanks
to an alliance arranged for SACO3 with the Santiago Visual Arts Museum, the
annual program seeks to support emerging talent in the context of a centralized
country, with an entire northern area where there are no university art schools.
The 2015 winner was presented on the 28th of August in the Huanchaca Cultural
Park during the inauguration ceremony for the exhibition Between the Shape
and the Mould. Among the applications received, the young journalist Roberto
Polanco was recognised, who has already developed a work based on photography
and video, also addressing interventions in the public space and landscape. The
nomination involves a residency during January in the Visual Arts Museum and
the Taller Bloc, plus an individual showing in the exhibition hall of the Minera
Escondida Foundation and a workshop for secondary education students in San
Pedro de Atacama. This latter seeks precisely to decentralize the repercussions of
the project within the region.
Participating in the evaluation and selection process were: local artist Camila
Díaz as commissioner; Dagmara Wyskiel and Christian Núñez as evaluators and in
charge of SACO4; and as judges, María Irene Alcalde and Arturo Peraldi, curator
and producer of MAVI, respectively.
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For the curator, the interest in generating this scholarship in Antofagasta is for
various reasons, among them, “Minera Escondida’s interest in establishing a
cultural focus in the area where it is situated and the desire shared with MAVI
of supporting the cultural development of the regions. Also, since there are no
art schools in Antofagasta, the artists that come from different disciplines need
outside support that at the same time connects them with the Santiago circuit”,
she recognizes.
Alcalde points out that the quality of the applications received would give account
of the development of the local scene. Among the conditions that winning artists
must have, she adds are having demonstrated a minimum body of works (for
which they are asked to send a dossier). It is desirable that they are working on a
project and are adaptable to different situations, since the practice situates them
in different departments in the museum.
CONCEIVING #GARMO
Francisco Vergara was recognized in the first version of the MAVI/Escondida
residencies program in SACO3. The journalist with a degree from the Universidad
Católica del Norte in 2014, was in Santiago during January of this year. The artist
remembers that when he was an adolescent, a first opportunity for alternative
education was the collective work he had with the audio-visual project Cámara en
Mano (Camera in Hand), directed from the Mario Bahamondes Public School by
Paulo Figueroa (Film director). He also remembers the Artistic Education Capsules
(SE VENDE 2012 project) that awoke his more creative side, he says. At that time,
he covered the Anchor on the hills of Antofagasta with cloth, an action that become
iconic in local history. The next year he exhibited the work Margen Hundido (Sunk
Margin) in SACO2, an aquarium where you had to submerge your face and use
aquatic lenses to see a video about the seabed of Antofagasta.
How was your experience in Santiago?
The scholarship included the option to get to know the functioning of the museum,
the execution of events linked to the space, to appreciate the staging and intervene
in some of the procedures set off by these activities, among others. I also had the
opportunity to go into depth in the Interface Method – MAVI of the Educative Area
that designs the plans for providing access to the contents of the showings, where
emphasis is made on the promotion of three focuses: educative, cultural and
social. From the most practical focus, the working visit gave me the opportunity
to perform artistic research that strengthened my creative potential. Taller Bloc
gave me tutorship in this process, by accompanying the artists Rodrigo Canala,
Gerardo Pulido, Tomás Rivas and Rodrigo Galecio. The “coaches” first discussed the
possibilities of a work, considering the little time I had, putting emphasis not on a
particular work but rather on personal knowledge and the need to drive my own
method, prioritising immediate experimentation, documentation, free expression,
and the discussion of those advances. The sessions were held twice a week,
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anchored in the generation and domination of techniques and software
characteristic of the language of video art, special effects and the construction of
scenarios for digital post-production.
What work resulted from that? What consequences has it had on your trajectory
and production?
MAVI, Taller Bloc, visits to the museums, galleries and the range of artistic options I
have attended have of course nourished the work-context relationship for creating
the video #GARMO. Regarding the intensity and particularity of the working visit,
it would have been ideal to extend the period to strengthen the learning even
more. Accordingly, the consequences or results have undoubtedly fostered my
desire to continue working. What has happened grants visibility and dissemination
to artistic practices in the northern part of the country, a motiving element that
corroborates the artistic potential of young people from the north. This year,
#GARMO was shown in the launching of SACO4. It was very strange; I hope that
what they saw has done something in the students that attended.
In what exactly did #GARMO consist?
#GARMO is presented as a game of experimentation, a test-piece process that
depended on an intense and short time. I have a thing for Atlantis, life along the
seashore. Are we a lost civilization? Is there really that lost world? I am currently
working on that, looking at the possibilities of the sea as an aesthetic and
stimulating source to go into depth in the urban issues of the cyber world. We
can confirm that there is a symbolic world in the Internet. #GARMO is an orgasm,
a release, like it is harboured in the network where the most ample information
abounds and flows; the fantasy of man submerged in the digital fabric, connecting
with an errant road, without any fixed direction, sometimes calm, lulling you to
sleep. Due to the excessive use of technology during the last two decades and the
high mesh of contents accumulated in that system, the idea of eliminating the past
ceases, leaving everything as waste and derived product.
What artistic projects are you currently working on?
I took a more digital path, but concentrated on reliving or recreating spaces that
fluctuate between real and fictitious. I am currently working on a video installation
that retakes figures or forms from the modernist style constructions of Antofagasta;
I play with the apocalypse, the terrestrial and the plastic. Also, along with Pamela
Canales and Natalia Mascar贸, we are in a project circulating local movies and short
films, Cine en tu Cancha (Cinema on your Court). I also want to formally continue
my studies in visual arts.
What is your opinion of what you are developing in Antofagasta (spaces, circuit,
new artist, works, etc.)?
What is being developed is an achievement. SE VENDE of source does its own
thing and that is a great effort and commitment by many. Officially there are no
halls for showing contemporary art. The language continues to be unknown for the
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institution. Neither the Culture Council nor the universities are willing to create
a space where the artistic practices that are followed in Antofagasta are valued.
What is needed is a career that professionalizes this field. Despite that, there
are many people working on what they do, in various dimensions; they exhibit
in Balmaceda, in the Multi-use Room (of the Biblioteca Viva), or on a wall in a
street. But the point is that there are things happening and that must be rescued.
The discrimination, the topics regarding contaminants from mining companies, or
even the literature of AndrĂŠs Sabella are the topics that stimulate local creators. I
believe there is acceptance on the part of the public of street intervention. That is,
the performance is allowed only if it is done by a well-dressed and pretty woman.
Some time ago, MarĂ­a Basura tried to do her work (based on post-porno) and
ended up scared off. Antofagasta was bad for her, she was constantly persecuted.
Now she went to Spain and became an icon who increasingly distances herself
from this so prudish context.
Carolina Lara

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SE VENDE
The Group SE VENDE Mobile Contemporary Art Platform, is a work group that arose
in 2004 in Antofagasta, developing projects in three lines of action: education,
linkage and territory. It involves a type of management in network, focused on
the dissemination and reflexion on new artistic practices through residencies and
activities that have used both the city and the desert, and that have marked the
entry into Antofagasta of what is contemporary.
Under the responsibility of the producer and cultural developer Christian Núñez,
and Dagmara Wyskiel, Master in Visual Arts from the Fine Arts University of
Cracow, Poland, SE VENDE is constantly looking for new platforms to promote,
professionalize and make the local core more dynamic. It has installed spaces for
dialogue and reflexion through exhibitions, conferences, workshops, residencies,
editorial projects, and trans-disciplinary activities, in addition to the coming
and going of various artists, curators and critics through the area. It has joined
its strategies through autonomous and collaborative arrangements, in order to
strengthen the indications of a local circuit and insert the Atacama Desert as a
focus of national and international interest for artists and researchers. Step by step
it is raising and activating a territory that wasn’t on the map of contemporary art
in Chile.
SE VENDE has therefore played a fundamental role in conforming a scene in
northern Chile, still being delineated, still to be strengthened. Outstanding
regional artists have passed through the lines of the group, with a new generation
entering recently, including artists such as Pamela Canales, Francisco Vergara,
Izak Mora, Camila Díaz and Jorge Guerrero. The platform has demonstrated that
contemporary art is strengthened in the regions thanks to the will of a handful
of actors who have learned to link more effectively with cultural institutionalism
and private enterprise, with a generous, open and dynamic attitude being crucial,
that always includes the participation of other actors and those linked to the
community.
A diversity of actions that have also been situated in contexts as distinct as
Santiago, Concepcion, Coliumo, Chiloe, Valparaiso, Villa Alegre, Iquique and Punta
Arenas, as well as in cities in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, United States, Poland
and Uruguay, and if we add the participation in collective exhibitions, SE VENDE
has also been in Beijing (China), Jakarta (Indonesia) and Krasnoyarsk (Russia).
BEFORE SACO
Since the first actions in 2004, the Group SE VENDE has caused the public and
“traditional” artists to face the perplexity of objetual, conceptual, experimental or
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ephemeral practices. The first collective interventions were located in emblematic
buildings, in architectural heritage sites or in the streets of the city. The holding
of open forums for reflecting on art topics that are crucial at a local level has
been inseparable, as well as the participation of special guests, authors and
academicians.
The first project, Se Vende 1, linked creative production with architectural heritage,
being installed in a mansion on Argentina Avenue that was then for sale. In parallel
to the showing, a contemporary art forum was held: for the first time there was
reflexion in the city in this regard, confirming especially the need to start talking
about it.
Along the same line, in 2006 Se Vende 2 continued occupying a building in the very
centre of Antofagasta. Special guests from Santiago came to this second event,
the artist Carlos Montes de Oca, plus the academicians Pedro Celedón and Gaspar
Galaz, who participated in the weekly forums that achieved high attendance.
In 2009, the third version of Se Vende occupied the public space and emblematic
sites of the city, such as the Municipal Spa, the Antofagasta Regional Museum
and the Longshoremen’s Union. It also had the participation of a key artist in the
recent history of Chilean art, born in the area and internationally recognized: Juan
Castillo, who continued the itinerant project Minimal Barroco here, with a truck
that travelled the streets presenting videos with residents of Antofagasta who told
about their dreams. The author, who in the 70’s and 80’s was one of the founders
of the Colectivo de Acciones de Arte, CADA, also headed special encounters with
young artists from the area. As part of forums, the academicians Alberto Madrid
and Fernando Balcells, this latter also formerly of CADA, arrived from Valparaiso.
At that time, collective intervention was a poster that carried the words “SE VENDE”
and that was installed as an irony in various parts of the city, causing a very special
situation in the main square, where the advertisement was repeated 400 times
throughout the environs. The act was considered by the local press to be a protest
by anonymous authors against the underground parking project that was dividing
public opinion. The artists thereby burst into the city’s fabric, inciting the attention
of the local media.
With two exhibitions in 2005 and 2007, respectively, Otro País (Another Country)
brought together local artists in the PUC Extension Centre, in Santiago and in
the Contemporary Art Museum (MAC in Spanish) of Valdivia. The project was a
platform for network construction and experimentation outside the regional
margins, with a free interpretation of the concept of “another country” pointing
out that the Great Northern region of Chile actually turns out to be another
country for Santiago, and for the rest of the national territory.
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After these experiences the group was able to bring together a format for linkage
and associativity that was gaining notoriety. In 2009, Dagmara Wyskiel and
Christian Núñez participated, respectively, as editor and field producer of the
Triennial of Chile, an event with which the country started the commemoration of
the Bicentennial, with the Paraguayan Ticio Escobar as general curator. One of the
objectives of the contemporary art encounter was to strengthen regional scenes
and make them more dynamic, extending to Valparaiso, Concepcion and Valdivia.
Thanks to the group, Antofagasta was perhaps the only area where the effect of
these actions transcended the temporary nature of the Triennial.
At that time, the exhibition Otro Eje Norte - Norte (Another North – North Axis) was
the result of a clinic held by the Argentine curator Marcos Figueroa, considered by
the group as a third version of Otro País. It was not named the same only because
the Triennial board asked that it not be. The showing brought together in the MAC
of Salta and the Antofagasta Council of Culture and the Art independent artists
from northern Argentina and Chile and three groups: LA PUNTA (Tucumán), LA
GUARDA (Salta) and SE VENDE (Antofagasta). From an accustomed north – south
vertical axis due to our centralism, a horizontality was drawn that traversed the
Andes mountain range, resulting in the creation of LA RED, a platform that brought
together these groups that since then work together with projects that cross
borders.
INTENSE YEARS
The year 2012 was particularly intense for the Group SE VENDE in taking on lines
of work previously developed as well as new formats, spaces and strategies. The
book SE VENDE 4 (SV4) was an editorial project that constituted a record of this
set of actions.
The project Agenda de Artes Visuales para la Sala Multiuso Biblioteca Viva
Antofagasta, (Visual Arts Agenda for the Multi-use Room of the Biblioteca Viva,
Antofagasta), financed by Fondart (Council of Culture and the Art), constituted
the backbone for the majority of activities that year, including conferences,
workshops, conservatories and exhibitions, with national and international
guests. Also added that year were other actions produced by the Group or works
developed by visiting artists, such as the recording of a chapter of the documentary
series Territorios Imaginados: 6 Ciudades en la Mirada de sus Artistas, (Imagined
Territories: 6 Cities in the View of their Artists) by the documentarist Rodrigo
Cepeda and by Productora Almagico Films, supported by contestable funds from
the CNTV (National Television Council); and the residency of the Colombian artists
Luis Fernando Arango, by the Colombian Ministry of Culture.

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Here in detail are several of the 2012 activities:
- Educational Capsules, a workshop of emerging initiatives that resulted in six
individual exhibitions, a participation in a collective showing, a debate and
in intervention in the public space. This involved an alternative program of
professionalization of emerging artists. A new generation was configured. The
diversity of support and concerns related to the context were characteristic of
a repertoire that did not pass unnoticed, inciting the attention of the press and
even awakening controversy, such as occurred with the photographs painted with
blood by Pamela Canales, or the graffiti of Izak in the street, showing the body of a
mutilated women that was erased by indignant neighbours.
- Among the actions intended to generate networks, contact with the public and
education in contemporary art, the journalist and art critic Carolina Lara brought
to the Biblioteca Viva hall the exhibition Cuerpos rebelados: la performance en
Concepcion, (Rebel Bodies: the performance in Concepcion), where Natascha de
Cortillas, Guillermo Moscoso, Luis Almendra and Alperoa (Álvaro Pereda Roa)
participated. In addition to photography, video and photo novels with records
of performances, the showing included the in situ participation of two of these
artists. A speech was given in parallel where the expert addressed the topic of
curatorship and a workshop with local culture journalists.
- An encounter and collective showing of LA RED in the same hall brought together
along with SE VENDE, two spaces from northern Argentina with whom they worked
since the 2009 Visual Arts Triennial: LA GUARDA and LA PUNTA.
- The Program of Residencies The Driest Place on the Earth zoomed in on Quillagua,
and Fernando Prats, a Chilean artist residing in Spain inaugurated the cycle. During
four years more than thirty national and international artists have passed through
the oasis.
- The conference by the theorist and curator, Justo Pastor Mellado, on the work
Gran Sur (Great South) by Fernando Prats, a monumental intervention in the
Chilean Antarctic that marked his participation in the 54th Biennial of Venice in
2011, was held after Prats’ residency in The Driest Place on Earth. The lecture left
open the question regarding what is beyond the evident geographic oppositions
between his works: Gran Sur and Acción Quillagua. Mellado then shared his vision
on the indications of a local critical mass.
- In parallel, there were projects developed beyond regional and national borders,
marking the presence of SE VENDE in spaces in Santiago, Concepcion, Chiloe,
Colombia and Poland, with projects for creation, circulation of the work and the
generation of networks: the action Cultivo de tiempo (Time Cultivation) in three
Colombian cities (Museo del Barrio in Manizales; Casa Tres Patios in Medellin and
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Laagencia in Bogota); the work Polonus Populus, which occupied the principal hall
of the Contemporary Art Museum of the Universidad de Chile; and the installation
Cuida tu jardín (Take care of your garden) in the 3rd Ars Polonia Biennale. Around
the circuit of international events, actions of an interregional nature were carried
out, starting in CasaPoli (Coliumo, region of Bio Bio), where the interventions and
records of Tres Bordes de la belleza (Three borders of beauty) were held along with
the Polish artist Halina Chmielarz, continuing with visits in the Solariega Mansion
in Villa Alegre and in Caja Negra Visual Arts of Santiago, including various instances
of dialogue and exchange of editorial material.
- Actions were also taken related to artistic education, which involved the Liceo
Experimental Artístico (LEA) (Experimental Artistic School) of Antofagasta and the
Colegio Artístico Salvador (Salvador Artistic Public School) of La Florida, Santiago.
During the exhibition Polonus Populus, by Dagmara Wyskiel in the MAC, in May
2012, the workshop Ejercicios simples para evitar la pixelación de la memoria
(Simple exercises to avoid pixilation of the memory) was held with students from
Santiago. With the notebook Docencia Artística en Chile, dos visiones (Artistic
Teaching in Chile, two visions) and the exhibition of works of young people with
non-conventional supports, both in LEA and in the Salvador Artistic Public School
of La Florida, Santiago the encounter between the two educational establishments
concluded, organized this year thanks to the National Fund for Artistic Education.
Teachers and students from Secondary Education in Visual Arts, Theatre and Music
participated.
In 2013, activities continued with intensity. In January, SE VENDE participated in
the encounter of independent contemporary art projects Local+Visita, organized
by Móvil in Concepcion, and that added to members of groups from Valparaiso,
Santiago, Temuco and Concepcion. The nine projects invited also included an
exhibition in the Corporación Cultural Artistas del Acero composed mainly of file
material such as photographs, publications, posters, videos and conceptual maps.
In September of that year, SE VENDE was in the section Pop-Up Spaces of the 5th
version of Ch.ACO, the Santiago Contemporary Art Fair. Thanks to the invitation
from its organizers and support from the Antofagasta Regional Government,
five emerging artists were given the chance to feel the other world of art, the
existence of which they perhaps did not suspect; one that was more glamorous,
international and commercial.
Highlighted among the new generations that have worked with SE VENDE and that
have been part of the group’s exhibitions and activities, is Pamela Canales, who in
Ch.ACO exhibited her work Pasas para la Memoria (Raisins for Memory), a map
of Chile, formed precisely with raisins, who at that time was studying Photography
Direction in Buenos Aires; and Jorge Guerrero with a work in performance and
who in the inauguration of SACO2 presented Concreción Septaria (Concretion
Septaria); and also Francisco Vergara, who for the Education Capsules exhibited a
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photographic work, Esquema desnudo (Nude scheme), and also carried out the
intervention Ancla (Anchor) on the city’s hills, nullifying the city’s symbol with a
gigantic cloth that covered it for a few hours. He also participated in the residency
of Fernando Prats in Quillagua in 2012.
The editorial projects of SE VENDE also include the 2012 catalogue of the SACO1
exhibition, Arte + Política + Medio Ambiente (Art + Politics + Environment) in
2013, the book with the record of SACO2; and in 2014 and 2015, respectively, the
bilingual publications of SACO3 and SACO4. This is in addition to a wide spectrum
of mediation pamphlets and fliers, planned to facilitate contact by the local public
with conceptual art.
It can be said that in ten years of work, the Group SE VENDE has brought together
a small but significant group of artists for the city, putting together school without
school, and at the same time occupying established places and other new places,
from the street and unconventional spaces to the Multi-use Room of the Biblioteca
Viva Antofagasta, the Cultural Living Centre, the halls of the Antofagasta Station
Cultural Centre, the Huanchaca Cultural Park and the Regional Library, adapting to
the context and transforming it, building utopias that become reality, such as the
program of residencies The Driest Place on Earth in Quillagua. It involves insistent
and resistant work that has converted the Mobile Contemporary Art Platform into
a reference point in northern Chile, with networks inside and outside the country.
All this despite the fact that its actions were marked by the big NOTHING there was
very far north of Santiago, in the Atacama Desert.

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A PROYECT BY

PRESENTS BY

INVITED BY

SPONSORED BY

MEDIA PARTNER

COLLABORATORS

SUPPORTED BY

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The Contemporary Art Week is gradually being converted from a fleeting
and solitary event in its beginnings to a broad, diverse and collaborative
platform. After four years of arduous work, SACO is a magnet that now
questions and extends all the limits and definitions proposed when it was
founded, consolidating its own and attracting outsiders. Having lasted a
little more than a week in 2013, in 2015 they were seven, with a territorial
prism that has incorporated each time more outside, fresh and curious
views. Collaborations of all types, interest by public schools and the
commitment of local culture workers have enabled strongly impregnating
it in the northern fabric. SACO4 was welcomed very fondly by companies,
the media, and most importantly by the public. An intensive one-week
residency with 84 students from 3rd and 4th year secondary education
from the entire Great Northern region of Chile, with seven international
guests was the unquestionable highlight this year. The art camp is a format
that should be replicated in other parts of the country and abroad. Three
important opportunities were also added to In the framework of SACO4,
which diversified the cultural offering to the northern audience. All this
makes us think of SACO as a platform and not an event, like a table that
is set instead of a plate of food, or a lecture hall more than a single book.